


Invisible Ink

by Lucidnancyboy



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Stucky - Fandom, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: A comedy at heart, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bisexual Steve Rogers, Bucky and Steve being Idiots, Bucky hangs out with teenagers, Bucky is a teenager at heart, Canon Divergent, Dick Jokes, Explicit Language, First Time, Fluff and Angst, Foot Fetish, Humor, Lack of Communication, Love, M/M, Mild Dom/sub undertones, Ned is hilarious, Past Steve/Peggy (mentioned), Peter Parker is a Good Bro, Pining, Plenty of Ned, Plenty of Peter Parker, Plenty of Shuri, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Power Bottom Steve Rogers, Sappy, Sassy Bucky Barnes, Sexual Content, Sexual Humor, Shuri Is a Good Bro, Sweet Steve Rogers, Tattoos, The sweetest thing I've ever written, Tony Stark is a Dick (and a good bro), Top Bucky Barnes, infinity war fix-it, promise!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-19
Updated: 2018-05-22
Packaged: 2019-05-08 23:58:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 42,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14705239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lucidnancyboy/pseuds/Lucidnancyboy
Summary: Life after Thanos. Needless to say, it was a big change for Bucky. He’d left his Wakandan safety net to dive headfirst into a real, honest to goodness, romantic relationship with Steve, and, surprise, surprise, life in New York was a hell of a lot more complicated than hanging out with Shuri by the lake and chillin’ with his goats.To symbolize the excessive gooeyness of their new and wondrous love affair, Bucky decided to get a tiny heart tattooed on his hand as a surprise for Steve. So far so good. But then life’s inevitable road bumps had come into play: a gang of unruly teenagers making life harder (but also better), and Steve spending more and more time away from home.The question was, could the power of one little tattoo help them figure out domestic bliss? God, Bucky hoped so...





	1. The Paper Heart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [inflomora](https://archiveofourown.org/users/inflomora/gifts).



> Welcome to my collaboration with [InflomoraArt](https://archiveofourown.org/users/deepthroatdraco/pseuds/hufflepxnk) for the 2018 Captain America Reverse Big Bang! I’ll be posting one chapter per day through Tuesday May 22nd, with the big reveal of Inflomora’s full drawing of Bucky at the beginning of Chapter 4. Trust me...it's beautiful, and he served as a very inspiring muse! We hope you enjoy our collab. :) 
> 
> Infinity War Note: This fic is canon compliant (mostly) up to the final battle in Infinity War. The story contains ALL the spoilers as well as a serious fix-it, so head’s up going in. 
> 
> A big shout out to my selfless beta [Lorien](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lorien/works) who laughs at my jokes, teaches me about grammar, and is the best cheerleader I could ever ask for. Check out her gorgeous Stucky art [drjezdzany](http://drjezdzany.tumblr.com)

                                 

You’d think that _literally_ saving half the universe might earn a guy a little down time, but here Bucky was, waking up alone in his new bedroom... _their_ new bedroom...with some very intense morning wood and nobody to share it with.

It was bullshit.

Yes, _Thor_ had been the one to save the day; chopping off Thanos’ entire arm with his kickass axe, but Steve had heroically grabbed the gauntlet (arm and all) and run with it through the burning trees, putting as much distance as possible between Thanos and those fucking stones. Yes, _Thor_ had been the one to open the bifrost and send that genocidal dick to rot in Hela’s old digs in Niflheim, but Steve had zig zagged through the carnage of the battlefield, killing his fair share of leftover alien dog monsters on his way to Shuri. And, _Steve_ had managed to do all that with a head wound, traumatic brain injury, dislocated shoulder, four broken ribs, and the shock from seeing Wanda blast Vision into a trillion pieces.

That kind of dedication should’ve earned Steve (and everyone else, for that matter) an all expense paid, ten day vacation to the crystal clear waters of Fuji, a relaxing cruise to the bahamas with steel drums and massages, or, for god’s sake, even a long weekend in fucking _Florida!_ At this very moment, the two of them should be sprawled out on colorful beach towels getting tan on the sandy white beaches of Naples, drinking fruity drinks out of goddamn pineapples, smearing way too much coconut suntan lotion all over each other’s backs, abs, and asses, and reminiscing about the good ol’ days with the last remaining leather skinned survivors of their generation!

Bucky stared long and hard at Steve’s empty pillow, wishing that a flock of seagulls was flying in slow circles overhead as they dug coquinas out of the sand with their toes. But, _no_ _,_ post Thanos, the world had gone to shit. Turns out, surviving imminent doom makes people a special kind of crazy; seize the day, carpe diem, and all that jazz. There were big messes all over the planet, and Steve, well, Steve never could stop himself from picking up a goddamn broom.

The man formerly known as Captain America had lasted four whole weeks before charging out to save the day. And that included the four days it had taken Shuri to put him back together in Wakanda, the three days he’d been held against his will at the compound infirmary, and the three weeks the two of them had spent getting reacquainted in all sorts of new ways.

Bucky blew out a big, long, obnoxious sigh that turned into an even bigger, longer, and more obnoxious groan. He’d spent enough years waking up alone! First as a pining teenage idiot, then as a pining twenty-something idiot, followed by years of wonderful morning wake-ups with the Russians and their fucking dogs, the glory days of Hydra dragging his ass out of his climate controlled cryo-tube and zapping his brain before breakfast, and, _finally,_ all of the insufferable mornings after the helicarrier. Those had been the worst of all. Waking up alone in the alleys of DC with a cardboard box over his head. Rolling over to the company of cockroaches in a cheap hotel in Pittsburg. Jolting awake to the sound of a nightstick hitting a metal pole in the last car of the A train in New York City. That noise had been Bucky’s signal that it was finally light enough to stalk Steve on his morning run through Central Park (brain damaged pining). But that wasn’t all. Let’s not forget waking up alone and sweaty, stuffed into a ratty sleeping bag in Bucharest (long distance pining), or alone and pining in Wakanda...Jesus. Enough!

Scrubbing at his eyes, Bucky tried to cut himself some slack. Feeling grumpy was a perfectly normal reaction to waking up alone! A _human_ reaction! And now that Steve’s pillow was permanently parked right next to his, and Bucky knew exactly what it felt like to wake up with Steve’s naked back stuck to his equally naked stomach, it was his _right_ to feel cranky, dammit! He made a valiant effort to push his dick down inside his loose grey sweatpants, but it popped right back up. Bucky’s _big_ brain understood that Steve was only gonna be gone for six more days, but his _little_ brain was having trouble with the concept.

“Sorry, buddy. I know it’s been three days, but we’ve got five more lonely wake-ups to go. You’re shit outta luck.”

His dick responded by getting even harder, and Bucky let out his most obnoxious groan yet.

“C’mon, be reasonable. In the larger scope of things, what’s six more days?”

His dick was  _not_ listening to reason, informing Bucky that it _needed_ to be squeezed into the warm spot between Steve’s thighs, surrounded by Steve’s calloused fist, or rubbing up against Steve’s seventh and eighth abs right fucking now! Bucky rolled his eyes at his stubborn cock, then rolled them again at himself for being stupid enough to argue with primal instinct in the first place. Six more days...

Stark, after kindly being returned from outer space by Fed Ex Thor, had dragged Steve, kicking and screaming (meaning he’d volunteered), on a humanitarian mission to Scotland. Apparently, spaceships hovering in the sky, mind stones cutting buildings in half, and ugly aliens stomping through the streets featured heavily on the morning news had triggered some very serious government unrest. The First Minister was hoping that the public would be reassured by a few friendly superheroes helping to replace the hundreds of broken windows in the looted businesses. Wilson, with his blindingly white smile, had been an obvious choice to go along for the ride, and Natalia was always good at encouraging people to chill the fuck out. And Stark...well, Bucky thought that he was a shit choice, but whatever. Not his call. Bucky’s presence had been requested, but he’d already had plans of his own: _fun_ plans, _quality_ plans, therapeutic, teenage Princess plans! He was excited. Really and truly he was! But he was still grumpy and whiny, ‘cause _Steve..._

Lurching away from Steve’s pillow, Bucky curled up on his side with his back to the french paned windows. Five more minutes. That seemed like a reasonable amount of time to shake off the last of his whiny, pathetic, lost puppy vibes before hauling himself (and his _painfully_ hard dick) out of bed...

Minute one: Take slow deep breaths. Pretend the morning sun isn’t peeking through the blinds and creating long stripes across the half empty bed. Picture the intoxicating curve of Steve’s shoulders when he's stretched out on his stomach, marveling at the perfect little hill his ass makes under the light grey sheets. Take thirty seconds to think about pinching the meatiest part...just a little...before giving it a playful slap.

Minute two: Try really hard to ignore dick. Like _really, really, really_ hard. Fail completely. Snort at dick pun.

Minute three: Flop onto back and stare intensely at tented sheet. Decide against jerking off based on principle (two could play the stubborn game). Flex muscles to make it bounce.

Minute four: Drift back to the place where herds of giggling children had left footprints in the dirt while Bucky'd slept. Linger on the exact moment when Steve had added his size twelve boot prints to the pattern. Remember how, despite the looming apocalypse, that had been a great day...maybe the _best_ day.

Minute five: Admit you’re not gonna stop thinking about Steve...

“FRIDAY,” Bucky blurted out. “Where’s Steve?”

“Good morning, Sergeant. Have you forgotten that Captain Rogers is in Edinburgh?”

“No, of course not! I mean, where is he _right now._ What’s he doing?”

“Currently, he and Mr. Stark are meeting with a group of at-risk teens. Would you like me to relay a message?”

Bucky flipped his hair into his face. He wanted to say, ‘Tell Steve that I miss the smell of his skin and I woke up with an uncontrollable desire to nuzzle my nose against the soft spot behind his ear’. But he didn’t. He _could_ have. He was _supposed_ to say those kind of things now. But, instead, he hid under his hair like an idiot and mumbled, “Just tell him I woke up thinking about him.”

Bowing out of the mission had been Bucky’s call. Stark had organized the trip last minute after the First Minister had dialed him up, but the dates had conflicted with the seven days Bucky’d already marked off on his non-existent calendar with his imaginary red Sharpie. Steve withdrawal be damned, there’d been no way in hell that Bucky was gonna reschedule a visit from Shuri! Absolutely not! She needed a break from putting the pieces back together in Wakanda, and Bucky needed...to hang out with her? God, that sounded weird. But something about Shuri’s energy had made him feel calm from the very beginning, even though everything about her personality was the  _opposite_ of calm; snappy, snazzy, _sizzling_...those were the kinds of words that described the way she carried herself. To put it in the most basic terms, she was awesome, and Bucky loved her.

The past month had been the longest he’d gone without seeing her in the year and a half since she’d worked her magic on his fucked up brain. He missed her like crazy, and, during one of their many online chats, she’d begrudgingly admitted to missing his ‘broken white ass’ too. Plans had been made, dates set, and yesterday she’d flown across the ocean in her invisible jet to ‘work’ on his new arm. Did she need an entire week to modify the color shifting system to make him even less shiny? Nope. Could she have worked with Banner to do it remotely? Probably. But you can’t go see ‘Hamilton’ remotely, you can’t learn how to properly haggle for knock-off Gucci sunglasses on Broadway through texts, and you certainly can’t overstuff your stomach with delicious hot dogs from sketchy street vendors via Skype! These very crucial educational experiences were something that Shuri needed in her life, and, after all she’d done for him...after all she was _still_ doing for him...Bucky wanted to be the one to share them with her.

Was it strange that Bucky’s favorite member of the exclusive Hero Club he’d oddly been initiated into also happened to be a seventeen-year-old girl? The jury was still out on that one. Especially since a large percentage of their friendship revolved around the black market exchange of videos of T’Challa falling for her super obvious pranks, and clips of Steve ‘assembling’ furniture and throwing screwdrivers across the room when he couldn’t make the drawers fit right. Bucky chuckled, because Steve the Handyman _still_ hadn’t patched the living room wall like he’d promised. Instead, the dork had casually leaned an umbrella up against the hole, like Bucky wasn’t gonna notice! It would forever be known as the worst cover-up in recent history; a conspiracy that Bucky'd dubbed ‘Umbrellagate’.

Flipping back over, he bounced his head against Steve’s pillow. Obviously, Steve was his number one...always had been, always would be...but Shuri, well, Shuri was something special, no matter how old she was. Plus, she’d been the one to bring him back.

“Hey, FRIDAY.”

“Yes, Sergeant Barnes?”

“FRIDAY, we’ve talked about this…”

“Sorry, sir. Yes, Sergeant Bucky?”

Bucky grabbed his pillow and plopped it over his eyes to hide his chuckle. Shuri was Bucky’s favorite non-Steve person, but FRIDAY was definitely his favorite _non-person_ person. She was a smartass who, on occasion, surpassed her creator’s smartass humor in a less acidic way.

“Is Shuri awake yet?”

“Considering the six hour time change, I think that you should expect her to sleep for several more hours. It usually takes a day or two for a person’s internal clock to adjust. It’s only eight o’clock, Sergeant Bucky.”

He already knew that. The position of the sun allowed Bucky to calculate the time with almost perfect accuracy. Jet lag and time zones were second nature. And, since they’d stayed up well past midnight eating a delicious Hawaiian pizza and catching up, he knew that Shuri'd be exhausted. The truth was, he was just trying to make conversation to avoid the dark thoughts that always crept into his mind when things got too quiet. But it was too late. They’d already arrived...

Thanos had destroyed so much. The entire planet’s confidence was shaken...scratch that...the entire _universe’s_ confidence was shaken, and so many people... _good people_...had lost their lives. Everything was still painfully raw, the skin red and puffy, and it would be for a very long time.

While Shuri had been putting Steve back together in Wakanda, and Natalia had been trying her best with Wanda, Bucky’d spent his days paying respects to the warriors that hadn’t made it out of the fight. He’d brought baskets of food, helped dig far too many graves, and had hugged countless mothers, fathers, children, wives, husbands...god, it hurt to think about it.

It was times like these when Bucky second guessed his choice to leave Africa. Honestly, they could’ve gotten Steve his own sarong, punched out part of the wall to put an addition on the hut, taken up raising chickens _and_ goats, and Bucky could have pulled Steve into the simple life he’d built for himself. But Steve wasn’t simple. Never had been, never would be. And...Bucky was being stupid. His mind was being stupid. He _liked_ being back in New York! Goddammit, he needed to stop!

Like that was gonna work.

The instant the jet had landed at the compound, Steve had been wheeled off to the medical wing, while Bucky’d been shuffled into a fancy conference room where Stark’s personal tailor had been waiting to fit him for his first black suit. Long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, James Buchanan Barnes had owned a single navy blue wool suit. And, not quite so long ago, during their time in The Red Room, Natalia had helped The Soldier slip into a dark grey, double breasted suit to infiltrate a charity ball and assassinate a Head of State. But never black. While the little Italian man had measured and pinned, Bucky’d fought the urge to find Steve, throw him over his shoulder (tubes and all), steal the quinjet, and hightail it back to Wakanda. But he hadn’t. _Steve_ was his home, and New York was where Steve needed to be right now. Plus, there’d been memorials, tributes, and funerals to attend. Too many to count.

Bucky yanked the pillow down over his mouth because he knew exactly where his mind was heading next, and he didn’t wanna go there…not even a little bit.

There’d been no need for the tailor to coax Steve out of his hospital bed and fit him for a black suit, because he already had one from Peggy’s...dammit. Bucky bit the inside of his cheek, pushing the cotton and stuffing harder against his lips, and tried to hold back the tears and the inevitable string of swear words. It was one of Bucky’s greatest regrets that he hadn’t gone to Peggy’s funeral in London to say goodbye...to be there for Steve...to honor the memories of who she’d been to both of them. But he’d been to busy hiding like a scared child in Bucharest, burying everything in a ratty notebook and shoving the remnants of Peggy Carter beneath the rotting floorboards. Steve had tried his best to make Bucky feel better by talking about how hard it had been to visit Peggy, how much it had hurt to see her old and grey when it seemed like just yesterday that she'd been kicking ass and taking names. It didn’t work. No matter what Steve said, Bucky should've been there.

“Sergeant Bucky,” FRIDAY piped in. “I’d like to suggest removing the pillow from your face.”

What if he didn’t want to? What if he _wanted_ to suffocate in his black suit fog for a few more minutes? But Shuri was here. He was getting hungry. Steve loved him. And he was alive. Those were all good things; things that Peggy Carter would have smiled about. Too bad it was only his imagination when Peggy ordered, ‘Get that pillow off your face right this minute, Sergeant Barnes!’

Yeah, that was Steve’s girl...

Throwing the pillow at his feet much harder than necessary, Bucky sucked in a huge breath of cloud free air. “That was some quality advice there, FRIDAY.”

“Thank you, sir. I’m glad that you found it helpful.”

“You know who else gives solid advice?” Bucky paused, punting the pillow the rest of the way off the end of the bed. “Shuri.”

It was true. Shuri had given him wisdom well beyond her years, and he’d tried to listen and learn as much as he could while he’d been in Wakanda. It was harder to stay on track without the humid weight of the jungle to keep him grounded, or the physicality of training with Okoye and Ayo to help him maintain his center, but Bucky genuinely tried his best to practice what Shuri’d taught him: forgive yourself, appreciate what’s right in front of you, get your lazy white ass out of bed, and, whenever he’d failed at the first three, ‘practice makes perfect, Bucky’. Right now, he needed to work on being less whiny, forgiving himself for...well, _everything,_ but today it was Peggy specifically... _and_ getting his lazy white ass out of bed.

Okay, start with the easiest step: get out of bed. He could do this. Bucky sort of rolled towards the windows, but all progress ended there. It was pathetic really, getting stuck in a really awkward half roll because he couldn’t get the meaning of those black suits out of his head. When he glanced at the closet, Bucky could feel their presence; the darkness of the Italian wool suspended on fancy wooden hangers and zipped into black garment bags...not unlike the bags that had housed the bodies of their friends. Fuck! Why the hell did this kind of shit always have to pop into his fucking head? But, now that his brain was on a roll (unlike his body), he had to let it run its course. It was the best way to make it stop.

Bucky’d worn his black suit and had stood in front of a still unsteady Steve three times that first god-awful week; tying Steve’s black tie in a perfect Windsor knot the very same way he had when Sarah Rogers had passed in 1936. The first knot had been tied to honor an empty coffin for Vision, the second to place a memorial for Thor’s fallen brother in Norway, and the third to stand on a stage next to the mayor in Central Park as thousands of New Yorkers held candles to mourn those killed by The Black Order and their ship.

As the tiny flames had flickered in the night air, Bucky’d taken a mindful breath for each lost soul: forty-nine people who’d been innocently going about their day in New York, two-hundred-sixty-five brave warriors in Wakanda, one for Vision, one for Loki, a moment of silence for the Asgardian lives lost, and another for the countless others destroyed by Thanos’ hand. Neither he or Steve had said it, but Bucky knew that they’d both been wondering the same damn thing: How the hell, after more than a century, were _they_ the ones left standing? Especially when people so much more deserving were being lowered into the ground? But they’d stood side by side in their black suits, equally grateful and amazed that they could, without any real idea of what they were supposed to do next.

The ‘logical’ answer, according to Wilson, had been to set up a low-key apartment in The East Village. Brooklyn wasn’t home anymore, different was good, and the village still felt cozy. Stark had promptly outfitted the place with thousands of security gadgets that had thrown low-key right out the window: cameras, motion detectors, FRIDAY, a new vibranium door, bulletproof glass...you name it. It was absolute overkill, but, after getting fucking _impaled_ on another _planet,_ Stark had morphed into some kind of paranoid grandmother, chasing everyone around with a giant roll of bubble wrap.

A few days after they’d moved in, a crew of eight guys had shown up at six in the morning to replace their perfectly good windows. They’d only managed to _remove_ all the windows by lunchtime, so Steve had thoughtfully made everyone huge turkey sandwiches with fresh tomato slices while trying his best to convince Bucky that, despite his previous plans to straight up murder The Soldier, Stark had _always_ taken care of the Avengers.

Squinting at the cameras in all four corners of the bedroom, Bucky stuck his tongue out at the southeast voyeur, because, seriously, there was no way in hell that Stark’s protective streak had always been this extreme! Now, to be clear, Bucky appreciated security, but this apartment had been outfitted by an over-the-top, blue haired, cheek pinching Grandma version of Stark, who also happened to be buzzing on some high-quality crystal meth! At this rate, Bucky was expecting Stark to show up with two dozen homemade oatmeal raisin cookies tucked into a cute little basket, and all the equipment needed to install a lethal force field. Bucky chuckled, because maybe that’s why he was begrudgingly starting to like the guy? They shared the unstoppable desire to wrap Steven Grant Rogers in countless layers of bubble wrap. Oh, and the ‘no longer trying to kill him’ thing was pretty helpful too. Plus, Bucky _loved_ cookies.

The thought of delicious Grandma cookies gave Bucky the extra push he needed to roll the rest of the way onto his stomach at the very edge of the bed. Progress. Letting one leg hang over the side, he adjusted his problematic dick. _No,_ he wasn’t gonna hump the goddamn mattress (even though his brain was screaming that it was a great fucking idea at this point).

“FRIDAY,” he asked all casual. “How long till Steve gets home?”

“Twenty-one minutes less than the last time you asked.”

“Ugh,” Bucky groaned, giving in to the call of the cock and nailing the bed with a few good thrusts. “But I want pancakes.”

“I believe that pancakes are available to you, with or without companionship.”

“But I miss him…”

His five minutes were up (long ago), and he was still whining. It was mildly pathetic. He was also rubbing his dick on the bed, which was _massively_ pathetic. But, c’mon, it was _Steve._ From the moment puberty’s flood of testosterone had informed Bucky’s brain that he wanted to make out with the little shit instead of just hangin’ out and reading comics together, he’d wanted Steve around all the damn time! His life trajectory had been pretty indicative of that hardwired desire! And, now that he’d finally gotten the balls to actually _do_ something about it, it seemed pretty logical that Bucky’d be a tad possessive.

Before falling off the goddamn train, there’d only been a few times when Bucky’d been brave enough (or stupid enough) to touch Steve the way he’d really wanted to…

 

The Accidental Time:   Fourteen-year-old Bucky had been hauling around his new secret like a big ol’ sack of rocks. His back, shoulders, legs, heart...all of him...had been aching from it. Another school year was about to start, and he and Steve had wisely decided that one last summer hurrah had been in order. They’d hung out at the shore most of the day, snuck through a service entrance to crash the last three innings of a Dodgers game, then had jumped the turnstiles to catch the subway back to Bucky’s place. They’d done the couch cushion thing (like always), had analyzed the details of the game (like always), then had fallen asleep (like always). But, when they’d woken up the next morning, bones sore from the uneven cushions and the hardwood underneath, Bucky’d been wrapped around Steve’s back like a fucking octopus! Steve’s head had been jammed underneath his chin, Bucky’s knees had been bent like Steve was sitting on his goddamn lap, and, worst (or best) of all, Bucky’s arm had been looped around Steve’s tiny waist, his fingers tucked underneath the cotton of Steve’s shirt so he could feel his ribs expanding and contracting with every breath. Shockingly, Steve hadn’t made a move to untangle himself, letting Bucky breathe in the smell of his hair for what had felt like hours. But, the very second that Bucky’d heard Becca’s door creak open, he’d flung himself backwards so fast that he’d given himself an enormous goose egg on the back of his skull from crashing into the corner of the couch.

They’d never talked about it.

 

The Fear of Death Time: A few days before Bucky had left for Basic, he’d been scared half to death. He didn’t wanna go. He didn’t wanna leave Steve! He didn’t wanna abandon his mom and Becca! And, Jesus, he didn’t wanna die! Steve had been relaxing on the ratty couch in his living room, squinting at a newspaper, while Bucky'd been pacing in front of the window and trying not to stare at how pretty Steve’s shaggy blond hair looked in the afternoon light. Before he’d even realized what he was doing, Bucky had crawled past Steve to sit behind him on the back of the couch. When he'd looked over Steve’s scrawny shoulder, the headline had read ‘3rd Draft Assigns 9 Million Men’, and Bucky’s hands had started shaking at the very thought of firing a real gun. He'd slowly folded his fingers over Steve’s shoulders, the feeling of skin stopping the vibration as he’d rubbed a pattern of tiny circles. Bucky’d memorized the angle of Steve’s collar bones that day, the way his thumbs had felt sliding along the bottom edge of his scapulas, and the musical rhythm created by dragging his palms over the notches in Steve’s spine, because he’d known in his heart that he’d most likely never get the chance to feel them again. As the tears had quietly slipped down Bucky’s cheeks, Steve hadn't turned the page, reading (or pretending to read) the truth about Bucky’s situation, and never once turning around to question his wandering hands or his lies about getting drafted.

They’d never talked about it.

 

The Drunk Time: The instant Peggy Carter had waltzed into that London bar and into Bucky’s life with her gorgeous red dress, red lips, and pretty brown eyes aimed at Steve, and Steve alone, Bucky’s penchant for subtle pining had gone down the proverbial drain. He and Steve had fought that night, a flat out brawl, after Bucky’d downed more than his fair share of whiskey. In a tiny hotel room with flickering lights, Bucky’d spewed out a bunch of nonsense about loyalty before lunging at Steve and shoving his enormous new body up against the wall. He hadn’t hesitated; no pause, no shame, just years of pent up passion and desire driving him to kiss Steve right on his stupid, reckless lips. The crazy thing was, Steve hadn’t stopped him. In fact, he’d done quite the opposite; slowly breathing his air into Bucky’s lungs as he'd slid his tongue across Bucky’s lower lip. And that...well...that had been the best part and the saddest part mixed up into one messy chapter; the potential for something _more_ making their whole story that much more tragic. The last thing Bucky remembered about that night was yelling, ‘And that was without any fancy red lipstick, asshole!’, before he’d passed out on the bed. The Howlies had launched the next day, and, even though Steve had thrown him lots of tiny smiles with pink cheeks as they’d trapsed around Europe...

...they’d never talked about it.

 

The Scrambled Eggs Time: Bucky, unfortunately, had been part of the captive audience who’d had to witness Steve awkwardly kissing Sharon Carter in Berlin. It was already bad enough that he’d been jammed into that ridiculously small backseat like a gorilla in a shoe box while the asshole who’d called shotgun had kept leaning his seat back further and further in some sort of spatial pissing contest. But then, adding insult to injury, Steve had decided to put on that little show. It didn’t matter that Bucky’s brain was still scrambled eggs with too many peppers, onions, and big chunks of sausage at that point; all of his pent up, bullshit pining had returned full force. On the drive to Leipzig, Bucky had ‘accidentally’ kicked Steve’s seat about fifty times as he’d regaled Sam with wonderfully detailed stories about Steve’s romance with _Peggy,_ and, when Steve had turned around at a red light to give Bucky a sweet smile, he’d promptly flipped him off. The conversation that had followed had gone a little something like this…

 

Steve recklessly swerved across two lanes of traffic, cutting off not one, but two trucks before slamming the brakes as they hit the shoulder. It was only by the Grace of God that the Beetle didn’t slam into the guardrail!

“What the hell, Steve?” Sam yelled. “Did you see that truck? ‘Cause I sure as hell saw that truck! How about the other one? You know, the one with eighteen wheels!?”

Ignoring him completely, Steve turned his stupid face around and naively asked, “Buck, what’s wrong?”

Now, Bucky’d only known Sam for a few hours, but the way he was scrubbing his hands over his eyes and chuckling said that he’d already worked out the answer to that very stupid question. At least someone in this ‘car’ had a fucking clue!

Another truck laid on its horn as it flew past, the sound grating on Bucky’s nerves. “I dunno know, Steve,” he grumbled. “Even though I’m mentally unstable and I repeatedly tried to kill you yesterday, kissing Peggy’s niece in front of me like that was fucking bullshit!”

“Man, ain’t that the truth,” Sam mumbled.

“You just buried Peggy for Christ’s sake! It’s fucking gross, Steve!”

Bucky kicked the back of the seat two more times (hard) for good measure, as Sam whispered, “Preach.”

Maybe Bucky was gonna like this guy after all? He was tempted to go in for the high five.

Steve didn’t answer, but his cheeks flushed a nice shade of pink as he turned back around to grip the wheel. After a few tense beats, he aimed that stupid shy smile through the rearview mirror and muttered, “I’ve really missed you, Buck,” before pulling back into traffic.

 

Now, Bucky hadn't actually _touched_ Steve in that little story (unless you counted the seat kicking), but it was the closest Bucky'd come to telling Steve how he felt with actual words, so he was gonna include it.

Oh, and they hadn’t talked about it again.

 

In classic Pining Bucky style, when the opportunity had presented itself, he'd frozen himself out of love...out of fear...whatever...he was thinking too much. The point was, Bucky felt justified being a little selfish now that he’d _finally_ gotten his shit together enough to not only kiss Steve again, but to make out with the gorgeous, bearded Adonis on a regular basis.

“FRIDAY, can you order me pancakes? Two stacks, plus well done hashbrowns. And I want one of those breakfast smoothie things from that place around the corner. The kind with the bananas and peanut butter with that chalky protein powder stuff. And you’d better get double of everything in case our sleeping princess wakes up before dinner.”

“No.”

Bucky flopped off the edge of the bed and landed flat on his back. It hurt. His sweatpants were hanging off his ass and his hair was flopping in his face, blocking out the sunshine that was blasting through the window. He should probably get it cut…

He already knew what FRIDAY was gonna say, but he delivered his line anyway. “What do you mean ‘no’?”

“Doctor’s orders: to counter Sergeant Barnes tendency towards isolation, every effort shall be made to encourage positive interaction with the outside world. Mandates include: limiting access to carry-out, Amazon Prime, home delivery…”

“Blah, blah, blah,” he interrupted. “Got it. Thought maybe you’d ‘forget’ and do a guy a solid once in awhile.”

“I believe that I am ‘doing you a solid’, Sergeant Bucky, sir.”

The sigh was long and loud as Bucky dragged himself upright, gave his butt a good scratch, and yanked his sweats back up over his very persistent, very lonely, unyielding morning wood. Even though he and Steve had mastered the fine art of making out with lots of tongue, excelled at long hugs with cheeky ass grabs, and had recently ventured into the world of sloppy handjobs, so far Bucky’d only had the guts to tuck his dick into the space between Steve’s thighs while they spooned. Jumping right into actual sex had seemed...too fast? God, how the fuck was that logical? After _decades_ of pining, how could _anything_ be too fast? But it was. And he was totally okay with that. _Great_ actually. Bucky’s cock really _liked_ hanging out in the cozy cave between Steve’s thighs! The pressure created by the weight of Steve’s ridiculous leg muscles was heavenly, the feeling of Steve’s soft leg hairs rubbing up against the sensitive skin was perfect, and the heaviness of Steve’s balls smushed up against Bucky’s cock when he shifted his hips just right was, quite possibly, the best sensation in the world. Even though his love for Steve’s ball sack was a recent development, his dick felt lonely without that wonderfully warm space to subtly dry hump.

Wrapping his hand tightly around himself, he squeezed, letting his brain drift around in the magic of his new reality for a minute or two. Instead of spending hours staring longingly at the points of Steve’s shoulder blades moving underneath the cotton of his t-shirt or the heavy fabric of his uniform, Bucky got to press his lips against the bones while he slept. Instead of feeling guilty for wrapping his arms around Steve’s narrow waist, Bucky got to run his fingers up and down the trail of hair that led from Steve’s belly button down to his beautiful, hard…

Bucky’s cock jumped in his hand as a shot of energy pulsed through his belly. Yeah, that kind of thinking was making the lack of Steve worse, so Bucky let go and wandered towards the windows, letting his dick imitate a giant tent pole if it fucking felt like it.

Even though they’d only been in the apartment for a couple weeks, Steve had already tacked up a bunch of his sketches in random spots all over their bedroom walls: hearts filled with intricate Art Nouveau patterns, detailed drawings of the old stone bridges in Central Park, and studies of pigeons that Steve had inexplicably given a wide variety of hats (as if drawing pigeon portraits wasn’t already weird enough). Bucky’s favorite featured a very confused looking pigeon wearing a spiffy top hat and a monocle. It was titled ‘Should I invest in the B. & O. Railroad?’. God, Steve was such a weirdo! Chuckling, Bucky’s gaze drifted over the watercolor studies of his new arm, across the precise copies of colorful graffiti that Steve had drawn while sitting in the weirdest places, and past the caricature of Natalia sitting on Bucky’s shoulders with a big grin on her pretty cartoon face. But every bit of laughter got stuck in Bucky’s throat as soon as his eyes landed on the realistic portrait of Wanda.

Steve had gotten antsy on the flight back to New York, insisting that somebody bring him a pencil and paper _immediately,_ despite the fact that he’d been strapped to a bed with a shit load of tubes sticking out of his body. Bucky’d flat out refused, quickly realizing that some things about Steve were never gonna change, but Sam, without the benefit of years to build up an immunity to Steve’s stupidity, had eventually given in. He’d propped Steve up as much as he could, stuck a metal case of grenades on his lap as a very dangerous makeshift table, then had handed over a black pen and a crinkled piece of paper. Bucky had sat in silence, watching Steve’s hands moving for over an hour, and tracking his gaze as it shifted back and forth from the paper to the dark corner behind the weapon’s rack. That's where Wanda had been slumped with her knees pulled up against her chest.

It physically hurt to look at the crinkled drawing, with the blobs of black ink smeared along the edges. Steve had included every strand of Wanda’s unbrushed hair, heavily shading her profile with overlapping lines, and had perfectly captured the tension in her jaw and the bitterness in her eyes. It broke Bucky’s heart to know that the lightness and humor he’d picked up on in Leipzig would most likely never return to Wanda Maximoff’s face.

Flicking the bottom of the drawing, Bucky sighed. Friends, old and new, recreated on paper, pigeons in newsboy hats and sombreros, the carefully drawn lines of the streetlamp outside their window...it didn’t matter...every sketch provided a glimpse of an extraordinary life, tacked up with push pins like a timeline out of order.

“Hey, FRIDAY,” he questioned. “Did Steve draw anything today?”

“It is not my role to spy on Captain Rogers for you, Bucky.”

“Oh, _now_ you’re gonna call me ‘Bucky’? When you’re scolding me like a rebellious school boy? Shouldn’t it be the other way around? ‘Please turn in your homework, _Bucky.’_ versus ‘Why’d you cheat on the spelling test, _Mr. Barnes!?’_ I mean, that’s how I remember it working when I was in school.”

“The educational system has changed quite a bit since the 1930s, Sergeant Barnes.”

“Yeah, back then kids only had to dodge bullets in the war.”

Bucky meandered over to the window, staring out at a world full of new problems that he had no idea how to solve. God, that was too much to think about right now. He really needed to eat some pancakes and focus on the shit he could control.

The sun was shining in his eyes as he tapped the tips of his vibranium fingers against the glass, the gold seams shifting with each tiny impact. It was strange not being able to feel the vibration in his teeth like he could with the old arm. Shuri, genius that she was, had redesigned the internal structure to be lighter so it would roll and bend with his muscles and bones instead of grinding against them. Raising his other hand, he rapped all ten fingers in a symmetrical pattern; back and forth like music. Shuri had, as she’d put it, ‘blinged him out’. The flexible gold inlay allowed him greater range of motion _and_ housed a kinetic energy system that rivaled T’Challa’s suit. And the color shifting vibranium allowed him to be less reflective and shiny if the mood struck. Bucky loved it. Spreading out his fingers and comparing his hands, his non-cybernetic one looked...boring? Plain? Decidedly ‘not blinged out’?

He squished up his face, feeling the beginnings of an idea forming, but not quite hitting on it yet. For all of Shuri’s fixes in that department, his brain still didn’t always cooperate. Blowing out a breath, Bucky gave his annoying dick a shove in the downward direction before looking around for a pair of tight underwear to contain the beast so he could march down the street and get himself some fucking pancakes! But, before he managed to get that far, a tiny drawing that he’d never seen caught his attention. The paper was only about three inches square, obviously ripped off of something bigger, and had been tacked up in the very corner of the room at raging boner level. Bucky never would have seen it if it wasn’t for his dick, so, thanks for that, Morning Wood. Pushing aside the leaves of their obnoxiously big fern, he bent over to get a good look at it.

Most of Steve’s drawings were so detailed that, if it wasn’t for the serum, Steve’s eyes would’ve raised the white flag, shriveled up from the strain, and fallen out of their sockets long ago. If a fat, New York pigeon was covered with two-hundred-thousand grey feathers, Steve would draw two-hundred-thousand-and-one. Every deep frown line around Wanda’s lips told the horrific story of what she’d been through. And Steve’s drawing of good ol’ Grand Central Station included every single brick _and_ all fifty taxis parked out front (bored drivers staring at their phones included). But not this little sketch. Not at all. It was a roughly drawn heart with ‘S + B’ scrawled in the center, stained red with what looked like...lipstick...or maybe strawberry jelly rubbed into the paper with his finger? Bucky squinted at it, completely baffled by its simplicity as the fern took some serious abuse from his hard-on. Then, like a spotlight had literally switched on inside his head, the idea finally clicked.

Everything about their lives, together and apart, was complicated. No matter how badly they both wanted to spend ten days on a nude beach in the south of France, chasing sand crabs and smearing suntan lotion onto each other’s asses, it just wasn’t gonna happen. There would always be people who needed help, friends who were hurt...or worse...and problems that only people like Bucky and Steve were strong enough to solve. But this little heart? Bucky used his plain hand to carefully pull the silver tack out of the wall and lift the paper towards his face. This little heart was the opposite. It reminded Bucky of the way seventeen-year-old Steve had always insisted on helping his mother wash the dishes, stacking each mismatched piece in the cupboard like a work of art. It had always made Sarah smile, even at the very end when she’d been sick and frail. The simple lines reminded Bucky of how Steve still drank black coffee, even though, in this life, he could afford all the cream and sugar in the world. And the ‘S + B’? Yeah, that reminded Bucky of how simple their love was at the root.

That was it. They loved each other.

Carefully setting the drawing on the dresser, Bucky temporarily abandoned his pancake idea for one that was _so much better._ One that required a shower…

“FRIDAY, wake Shuri up. Jet lag or no jet lag, we’ve got places to go, people to see, and boring hands to fix!”

*****

 

Shuri hadn’t gone for Bucky’s plan. Well, at least not until after he’d apologized twenty times for waking her up, had lured her out of bed with Redbull, and had promised her a delicious lunch at the mom and pop diner a few blocks over. Even then, she’d dragged her feet until well past noon.

It had taken some serious sweet talkin’ on Bucky’s part to get Amy, his favorite waitress with the messy blonde hair, to ask the perpetually hungover cook to make his coveted pancakes. But, lucky for his stomach, Hydra hadn’t destroyed Bucky’s preternatural sweet talking powers, and Amy had a serious sweet spot for guys with long hair. How’d he know? Well, she’d flat out told him, on _many_ occasions, that she had a reoccurring dream about running her fingers through his ‘delicious, chocolate strands’. Bucky liked her. She gave him free refills on coffee and always slid into the booth next to Steve when the diner was slow to Google cool ways for Bucky to style his hair.

The pancakes had been utterly delicious, Shuri’d loved her pastrami on rye, and Amy had shown them a picture of a top knot, braid kind of thing from a show called ‘Vikings’. And that was supposed to have been it: food then Bucky’s plan. Simple. But Shuri'd done a little sweet talking of her own, adding in a few stops before Bucky’s brilliant idea could be put into motion.

Stop one: The Empire State Building.

Iconic, sure, but it was too crowded, too claustrophobic, and...did he mention too crowded? Well, it was worth mentioning again! _Too fucking crowded!_ Despite the hordes of overexcited tourists with selfie sticks, Bucky begrudgingly had to admit that getting a bird’s eye view of the ways the city had grown since he'd last stood at the top (with his ma and Becca, somewhere around 1939) had been breathtaking. Words couldn’t really describe how the gleaming buildings rising far above his vantage point had made him feel, but it was fair to say that Bucky’d felt like he’d stepped out of a time machine (even more than usual). A mental note had been made: take Steve early one morning, when the doors were first unlocked and the tourists hadn’t converged, just to watch his face light up.

Stop two: Rock & Soul Records.

Shuri loved hip-hop; new school, old school, rare, preferably on vinyl, and Bucky’d been more than happy to spend an hour watching her smile get wider and wider as she’d found gems by artists that Bucky had never heard of.

Stop Three: Shit you not, they were getting their nails done.

 

“Are you sure that color is the best choice for you, Bucky?” Shuri teased. “It is very...I think you would say, ‘gothic’.”

“For your information, it’s called ‘Road House Blue.” Bucky held up his boring hand (slightly less boring with three freshly painted nails) and flashed it back and forth, squishing up his nose at the disgusting smell. Obviously, this was a new thing for Bucky, but, he had to admit, getting your hand massaged while listening to soothing Vietnamese music wasn’t half bad.

“It looks black.”

Shuri’s accent made every word that came out of her mouth seem so damn important, like she’d just declared ‘Road House Blue’ an unacceptable hue for the entire Wakandan population. Bucky smiled, because she was a lot like T’Challa in that respect: royal, confident, and poised.

Much to the chagrin of the young Vietnamese woman trying to paint Shuri’s nails, she held up her own hand for Bucky to inspect and decreed, “This, my friend, is a special day! A celebration of our reunion! Don’t you think you should have picked something sassy and fun? Something a little more like me?”

“I’m not painting my fingernails pink!” Bucky chuckled, carefully lifting the bright pink bottle off the table with his metal hand to read the label. “Oh, and _definitely_ not with a color called ‘Girl Without Limits’!”

“Why not? Are you a girl _with_ limits?” She held his gaze, all serious, as Bucky pondered the deeper meaning of that question. Was Shuri calling him a girl? Was it a dare? _Would_ he look good in pink? What the hell? He was beyond confused...

Their intense stare down lasted a full minute before Shuri cut him some slack. Throwing her head back and laughing, she managed to stammer, “Oh, Broken White Boy, you should have seen your face. Priceless. Did you get that? Please, tell me you got that!”

“Did who get what?” Bucky flipped his head around just in time to see Tien, the little old lady who owned the shop, sheepishly creeping out from the back hallway. She shakily handed Shuri back her phone, glittery case and all, and side eyed Bucky like she’d just committed the crime of the century.

“Oh, my brother is going to _love_ this one!” Stretching out her arms like she was reading a marquee, Shuri dramatically announced, “Now showing. The magnificent White Wolf ponders masculinity and the undeniable beauty of the color pink!”

“Really? You’re gonna play me like that?”

Shuri’s finger hovered above the send button as she teased, “Maybe I should use one of my lovely pink nails to whisk this treasure off to your _boyfriend_ too, hmm?”

Every women in the shop giggled: the four Vietnamese girls using tiny brushes to paint nails and toes, the receptionist _pretending_ to talk on the phone, the two middle age ladies getting their own fancy manicures, and the saucy woman with the dreadlocks sitting by the door. Bucky’d declared her ‘saucy’ for several reasons. One: she’d been winking at Bucky every five minutes since they’d arrived. Two: her nails were long dry (so there was no good reason for her to be here). Three: she’d been hiding behind the latest issue of People Magazine (the one with Stark on the cover) between her unsubtle wink attacks _._ Now, she was cackling and not even trying to hide it, making two-dimensional Stark shimmy and shake.

Bucky took his sweet time giving each lovely lady a very dirty look, calling Tien a traitor in Vietnamese before throwing her a crooked little smile (he’d learned the language in the sixties. He didn’t like remembering how). But, he must be losing his touch, because all nine of them kept giggling, Stark kept right on shaking, and Shuri outright snorted.

“Wow.” Bucky tried not to laugh. “I open my home, share my pancakes, stand in that horrible line at The Empire State Building, get dragged into a dusty record store…”

“You loved the record store,” Shuri interrupted, perfectly arching one eyebrow. “The Curtis Mayfield record leaning against your chair proves that.”

Groaning, Bucky ignored her very true statement...Steve _was_ gonna love the record...but that wasn’t the point! “And," Bucky scoffed, “I let you talk me into this...whatever _this_ is...and…”

“This, my friend, is pampering yourself,” Shuri interrupted again (she was good at that), “and making yourself look beautiful in the process.”

“Who said I want to look beautiful?”

“Nobody.” She smiled, big and bright, and Bucky couldn’t help but follow suit when she said, “Now, will you at least let these wonderful ladies paint your _toes_ pink? If you do, I’ll have mine painted black.”

“Road House Blue.”

“Bucky, your appointment isn’t for over an hour! Live a little! This is the perfect opportunity for you to fill me in on all the juicy gossip about Steve.”

“Oh my god, Shuri, I’m not a teenager!”

“Yes, _but I am,_ and I flew halfway around the world to watch your face turn red in person when you tell me how it feels to _finally_ call the love of your life your _boyfriend!_ I know you’ve been holding out on me, Bucky Barnes!” Pointing at her phone, she quirked up the corner of her mouth. “So spill, or, I swear, I’ll hit send.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Oh, but I would.”

Yeah. She would.

"Fine,” he grumbled. “But only if I get a foot massage too. The same way Lieu here rubbed my fingers.” Bucky smiled at the girl, loving her chin length bob and the white lily in her hair. “Because, darlin’, that felt amazing.” The poor thing blushed so hard that Bucky was genuinely concerned she was gonna pass out.

“Yes!” Shuri did some kind of celebratory arm motion that Bucky didn’t really understand, and guilty Tien immediately shooed Lieu out of the way to lift Bucky’s shoes onto some sort of special footstool/rubbing apparatus. Guess the penance for aiding in video blackmail was rubbing the big dude’s feet, which, sadly for Tien, was gonna be cruel and unusual punishment since Bucky’d thrown on his gym shoes. The smelly ones.

“I know you kissed Steve in Wakanda,” Shuri blurted out, plain as day, to an immediate chorus of ‘oohs’ and ‘ahhs’.

Yanking off his shoes and socks, Bucky snapped, “I did not!”

Three seconds of stinky gym shoe exposure was all it took for poor Tien to turn a sickly green, so Bucky tossed the offending items into the back hallway before finishing his bullshit denial. “The world was ending, a space raccoon was crawling on my arm, those goddamn alien things were fucking everywhere…”

Suddenly, Tien slapped the bottom of his foot hard enough to sting and spewed a torrent of rapid Vietnamese in his direction. The gist was, ‘Watch your language in the presence of such an impressionable young girl!’ and Bucky got a sudden flash of his mother saying the exact same thing (not in Vietnamese) after he’d dropped a bag of flour on his toes and had screamed ‘fuck!’ in front of Becca.

Holy shit! Swiveling his head towards Shuri, Bucky couldn’t believe he hadn’t put it together earlier! Sassy attitude, book smarts _and_ street smarts, always knowing the right thing to say…

He had to take several really deep breaths to slow his heartbeat, because, Jesus, Shuri reminded him of his sister…

“You were talking about kissing Steve…”

“What?”

A kissing sound came from behind People Magazine as Shuri stretched out her arm to gently touch his metal wrist. She was always so kind when Bucky drifted off, understanding that some pieces of his mind would always get lost in the memories, despite the healing power of vibranium.

Her touch grounded him enough to say, “I was talking about _not_ kissing Steve, but thanks for reminding me.”

“You kiss Captain America?” Tien piped in as she ran her thumbs across his arches. Her English was broken, her accent thick, but her tone demanded an answer.

“He’s not called that anymore. And no, I don’t.”

Tien rubbed his left foot a little harder, making it feel _so good_ as she raised her eyebrows. In fact, all of them were staring at him with raised eyebrows as the old woman skillfully used foot rubbing magic to sap his will.

It felt _sooo_ good...

Finally, Bucky accepted defeat. It was no use to resist. They’d won. “Fine. I kissed Steve in Wakanda.”

It was like Bucky’d announced that he’d rescued a tiny kitten from a burning house and had personally given it mouth to mouth resuscitation before cleaning the soot of its fur like a mama cat with his sandpaper tongue. There was cheering and grinning, and Shuri looked like she’d eaten the mother fucking canary. The whole scene was weirder than that grunting teenage tree.

“He had the beard then, right?”

The squeaky voice had come from his left, on the other side of Shuri. It was the lady with frizzy bleach blond hair and bright green glasses who was getting little...jewels?...stuck on her frighteningly long nails. Bucky was pretty sure she was drooling.

“Um, yeah, he showed up with the beard. Waltzed into my hut while I was taking a nap and…”

“Your hut?” People Magazine finally lowered Stark enough to reveal more than just her winky eyes. Her lips were shockingly fuschia.

“Yes, I was in Africa and…”

“I wanna hear about the beard!” the redhead next to Green Glasses rudely interrupted. She was getting her toes painted turquoise; the color of the Mediterranean water that Bucky desperately wanted to be swimming in with Steve…

“I bet he brushes it. Does he brush it? Or, even better, does he let _you_ brush it?” Green Glasses leaned forward as far as she could without falling out of her chair, and you could’ve heard a pin drop; the peanut gallery dying to find out if Bucky groomed the man formerly known as Captain America.

Bucky laughed. What else was he supposed to do? He distinctly remembered scrawny Steve Rogers turning eighteen and bitchin' for hours about the three solitary hairs sprouting out of his chin. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, _three._

“Shuri, payback for this is gonna be a bitch…”

“Oh, Bucky. You know I can handle anything you throw my way.”

Yeah, he had no doubt about that.

Ten pairs of eyes stared at him with rapt attention as Tien put weird foamy things between his toes and unscrewed the bottle of ‘Girl Without Limits’. It was weird. Was this how women always acted in large groups? Was this a normal thing? Whatever, Bucky settled back in his chair to watch as Tien started painting his big toenail bright pink. If these gossipy ladies wanted to know about a kiss in a hut, then Bucky was gonna tell them about a kiss in a hut…

 

 

Bucky knew that Steve was on his way to Wakanda. That was where the fight was gonna be, so that’s where Steve was gonna be. Simple. Bucky also knew that he finally felt ready to see him. He’d worked hard, training his body and his mind, learning to smile again from a princess, learning to trust again by truly befriending a King, and learning to trust _himself_ through the faith of those around him. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t freaking the fuck out!

After Shuri had certified Bucky ‘Non-Toxic and Soldier Free’, he could’ve moved to the city at any point. T’Challa had invited him over and over, generously offering him a house of his own or a fancy room in the palace...Shuri’d even joked about throwing an air mattress in the corner of her lab...but Bucky liked his hut. It made him feel safe and calm. So, while everyone else was waiting anxiously for Steve’s team to arrive and preparing for the coming threat, Bucky’d wandered back to his tiny house with the dirt, the lingering scent of fire, and the peaceful view of the lake so he could freak the fuck out in peace and try to take a goddamn nap before the shit really hit the fan!

Steve already knew what Bucky’d been up to. There’d been a few phone calls, a couple letters, they'd Skyped...nothing about his recovery had been a secret...but Steve hadn’t come to Wakanda after Shuri had pulled him out of cryo. And he hadn’t come when she’d done the surgery to attach his new arm. Bucky’d told him not to. Not yet. Not until he was sure. Not until he was ready. Honestly, he’d probably been ready a few months back...no, scratch that...he’d _definitely_ been ready a few months back...but the whole thing was plums, and Bucharest, and a god-awful hangover in a London hotel room all over again. At least it was, until T’Challa had broken the news this morning that the world was ending and Steve was already on his way.

Wriggling around on the mat, he tried to find a comfortable position to stare at the tiny footprints in the dirt. The kids liked to spy on him when he was sleeping. It was creepy, yes, but he’d grown to love their sweet faces and the overlapping footprints they left behind. Bucky desperately tried to let his eyes glaze over...focus on the tiny circles from tiny toes...remember the way Steve had smiled in that tiny car...tiny dimples...tiny chest hairs peeking out the top of a light grey t-shirt…

 

 

“Buck?”

“Mmm?”

“Bucky, wake up…”

There was a soft chuckle coming from far overhead, and, when Bucky’s eyes snapped open, he found himself face to face with a pair of very beat up brown boots. Big feet juxtaposed in the center of tiny footprints. “Holy shit.”

“Yeah, good to see you too.” Steve was hunched over, the top of his head hitting the thatched roof as he gave Bucky that smile.

God, he was so beautiful. Why the hell hadn’t Bucky told him to come sooner?

He must have been in shock, because he blurted out, “You have a beard.”

Reaching up, Steve brushed the hairs with his fingers. “Yeah, I definitely do. And, since we’re pointing out the obvious, you look like Jesus.”  

Bucky blinked a few times, taking in Steve’s long legs, the way his sleeves were rolled up, how his hair was long enough to curl over his collar, and made a split second decision that he should’ve made a lifetime ago. Rolling over to reach the buckles and laces on Steve’s boots, he started undoing all of them immediately. “Steve?”

“Yeah, Buck?”

“Will you lie down with me? Before all of this starts...or ends? I just wanna hold you...without these boots, without that uniform, without all of it actually.”  

And there it was. All of Bucky’s cards thrown on the table along with the last of his cash, seventy-six cents in change, his watch, his secrets, and his wildly beating heart. It felt like all of the air had been sucked out of the hut as Bucky undid the last of Steve’s buckles and waited...and waited...and waited…

 _Finally,_ Steve stepped out of his boots without a word, dropping his harness before letting the heavy fabric of his uniform fall from his body piece by piece. Bucky glanced up just in time to watch the stiff line of Steve’s shoulders relax, his face visibly softening as he wiggled his toes in the center of the footprints wearing nothing but a pair of white boxers. The whole thing felt like a wonderful dream.

Before Steve could change his mind, Bucky threw back his woven blanket and scooched over to make room. Of course, he’d flat out forgotten that he was buck-ass naked except for the sarong tied around his waist and a healthy African tan. Oops. But, seeing as Steve immediately dropped to his knees, taking his sweet time checking him out from head to toe, Bucky figured he was cool with it.

Chuckling a little, Steve quipped, “This feels even _more_ taboo because you look like Jesus…”

“Oh, yeah?” Bucky patted the empty space next to him...wanting... _needing_ Steve to fill it...and threw the joke right back at him. “Well, you’ve always been a rule breaker.”

“Yeah, but not a sacrilegious one!”

It was amazing how quickly and naturally their banter came back, how easily the jokes rolled off Bucky’s tongue. As Steve carefully crawled under the blanket, curling up in front of him so their knees touched, it felt like the easiest thing in the world. Without breaking eye contact, Steve wiggled closer and closer until their noses were only a few inches apart. Bucky could feel Steve’s breath...actual warm air from his lungs blowing across his cheek...and it was like sharing a frosty bottle of root beer on a blazing hot summer day. Perfect.

“Have you always known?” Bucky asked, because there wasn’t a hint of surprise in Steve’s features; no shock, no ‘what the hell are we doing?’, just an overwhelming sense of summertime calm.

“Yeah.” Steve carefully brushed a piece of hair out of Bucky’s face. “I’ve known since that day at the ballfield when Ferris Dolan socked me in the jaw ‘cause I’d ratting him out for stealing that kid’s mitt. After you ran him off, you marched me over to the bench and carefully brushed my hair out of my face...just like this.” The tips of Steve’s fingers glanced Bucky’s cheekbone as he pushed another long strand behind his ear, lingering for a moment on the ticklish spot on the back of his neck. There was nothing platonic about the feelings that were zinging through Bucky’s stomach, or the way that Steve was staring deep into his eyes with something like devotion.

“We were…” Bucky searched for the memory. “...we were... twelve! Are you serious!? _I_ didn’t even know when we were twelve!”

Smiling, Steve rubbed his thumb over Bucky’s jawline, sensually, lovingly… “I know that too. You didn’t really figure it out till we were a little older. Around fourteen, I think. You started staring at me like I was an ice cream cone or something.”

“Ice cream?” Bucky laughed, not caring that he was blushing like an idiot.

“Yeah. Ice cream! You’d get this look in your eyes, like I was three heaping scoops of vanilla melting down the sides of a sugar cone and you wanted to lick up all the drips.” Steve quickly kissed the tip of Bucky’s nose, which was even more surprising than his shockingly accurate ice cream analogy.

“But…” A thousand questions raced through Bucky’s mind: Why? All this time? What the hell?...but Steve was here now, _right now,_ and he was close enough to see every pore, every fleck of blue in his intricate eyes, and the eight million beard hairs sprouting from a face that used to grow only three. It took about half a second for Bucky to realize that the answers didn’t matter. Why waste time answering questions from the past when your future is _l_ _iterally_ half an inch from your face, staring at you with a shy little grin?

Carefully sliding his flesh and bone hand around the back of Steve’s neck, Bucky could feel the muscles going pliant beneath his fingers as he pulled their bodies closer together. When Bucky finally kissed him, he paused the instant their lips first touched, appreciating the moment their whiskered smiles rubbed against each other for the first time. There was so much happiness in that ticklish touch, so much history balled up into one point of contact, and it wasn’t without meaning when Bucky chose to slowly run his tongue across Steve’s bottom lip; a tribute to the past before he lead them to places they’d never been.

“I love you,” Bucky whispered before kissing Steve like he’d always dreamed about. Soft and hard, slow and fast, careful and sloppy, all of it...all at once…

He couldn’t get enough.

When Steve finally pulled away, he buried his face in Bucky’s hair and murmured, “It’s always been you, Bucky. I was just stupidly waiting for you to ask me.”

God, Steve was an idiot. A big, stupid idiot who Bucky loved with every fiber of his equally stupid being. Suddenly, after all these years, asking seemed like the easiest thing in the world too.

Bucky kissed Steve’s forehead, then kissed it three more times for good measure, before whispering, “Steven Grant Rogers, you’re my everything, and I’ll love you till the end of the line. Will you marry me?”

 

 

“What!?” Shuri jumped right up out of her chair, weird pink foamy toe things and all, and screamed, “You’re _engaged!_ Are you kidding me!?”

There were squeals all around, Green Glasses started crying, Redhead’s mouth was catching flies, and People Magazine shouted, “That’s right, son! Get your man! You get him!” over and over as Bucky glanced down at his perfectly painted pink toes. ‘Girl without limits’ indeed.

Lieu literally ran up behind Tien, bumping into the old woman as she gasped, “Did he say yes!?”

“Well, if Shuri'd let me finish my story, you’d already have your answer.” Bucky waited a beat before smiling. “But, seeing how I was so rudely interrupted...”

“Bucky!” Shuri was bouncing up and down on her wet toes, excited like a kid at Christmas. “Tell us!”

There was no question that Shuri would forgive him for leaving out big chunks of the story when they’d talked. He knew that she’d understand Bucky’s reasons for underplaying the past few weeks; that his insistence that he and Steve were simply ‘trying out the boyfriend thing’ was a form of self-preservation in case the whole thing had gone to hell, and that the guilt of finding happiness when Shuri was going through so much suffering made it hard to tell the truth. He still felt bad for not telling her sooner. They were friends... _r_ _eal friends_...which was something Bucky hadn’t had for a very long time. But, the reality was, sometimes you have to keep things close to your heart, nourishing them and keeping them safe in their own little space to grow and flourish before opening the doors for all to see. Watching Shuri dancing in a little circle as the women clapped out a beat, Bucky knew that the time had come to let the giant cat out of the bag.

“Okay, okay,” Bucky hollered over the commotion, waiting a few seconds for everyone to calm the hell down. “Turns out, when Steve said he was ‘waiting for me to ask him’, he meant asking if I could _kiss_ him…” Chuckling, he remembered Steve’s sugar glider eyes. “But, lucky for me, after a few minutes of complete and utter shock, he rolled with my impulsive proposal and said yes. Well, first he yelled, ‘Holy shit, are you serious?’, but, after I kissed him again, he totally said yes.”

“Tell me you’re keeping the beards for the wedding!” Green Glasses was getting kinda scary with all the tears. She was probably gonna explode. “You _have_ to keep them!”

“Bucky Barnes! I cannot believe that you kept this to yourself!” Shuri put her hands on her hips, pink fingers sticking out at funny angles, and blue toes pointing at the ceiling.

“Honestly, we both thought we were gonna die in the space apocalypse, so…”

Real crocodile tears were running down Green Glasses face as she yelped, “So, you’re _not_ getting married?”

“No, no, we’re getting married...I mean...actually...we already are.”

People Magazine ditched the magazine, stood up, and transformed into Bucky’s biggest fan. “That a’boy!” she yelled. “Put a ring on it! That’s how you get your man!”

“I am speechless.” Waddling over, Shuri kissed Bucky’s cheek. “And I am _never_ speechless.”

“I know, I’m sorry. But it just seemed…” Bucky drifted off. He hated to say it out loud and bring down the mood, but she deserved to know. “We were planning on having a party when people felt like celebrating again, but, with everything that happened, with all the people we lost…” Pausing, he looked Shuri in the eyes. “With all the people _you_ lost, it didn’t seem right to make a big deal out of it. Two weeks back, it was a beautiful sunny day and we'd decided to walk through Midtown and grab some pizza for lunch, but, somehow, we ended up at the courthouse filing for our license instead. We got married in jeans and t-shirts a few days later by a really old judge named Clyde, then grabbed a couple beers at a dive bar afterwards. It was kinda perfect...just the two of us, I dunno…”

He shyly met the gaze of every woman in the room, amazed by the smiles, the happiness, the acceptance. Even scary Green Glasses, with her creepy tears, was making him feel like the king of the world. God, getting a chance to live in this time? How the hell had he gotten so goddamn lucky?

Shuri’s smile was the biggest of all when she said, “I can’t imagine anything more perfect for you, Bucky, but…” She paused, bending over to give him her ‘serious face’. “...when the two of you _do_ decide to plan that celebration, which you _should,_ I'd better be the first one you call, Mr. Married Man. Party planning is one of my many specialties.”

“Smartest person on the planet _and_ a top notch party planner? Wow, Shuri, way to make the rest of us feel inferior.”

Bucky laughed, light and easy, as Tien carefully put the finishing touches on his toes. If Becca could only see him now...

It hurt a little when Shuri poked him in the neck, then his ear, then his cheek. “Say I get to plan your party!” She laughed, adding a poke to his chest, his armpit, on the dimple in his chin. “Say it!”

“Okay, okay! Deal!”

As she took a satisfied step backwards and grinned, Bucky saw a hint of his sister’s smile.

“Good!” Shuri declared. “Now, as soon as your pretty pink toes are dry, I think it’s time to get a tattoo!”


	2. Sweetheart

 

Bucky bounced his viking man bun (thank you, Shuri) against the back of the couch, listening to the squeaky sound of the leather as he tried to make heads or tails of the weird kid that Parker’d dragged along for the ride. Seriously, how could somebody Ned’s age think that a shirt covered in hideous orange and brown flowers was anything even remotely _close_ to a good style choice in this century? The gaudy pattern, lightweight cotton, and billowy short sleeves gave Bucky sixties flashbacks: stifling humidity, helicopter blades buzzing low over the jungle, the smell of napalm...yeah, the sixties had sucked.

The four of them were killing time, playing pool and devouring nachos, in the lounge outside of Stark’s workshop, and Bucky was feeling, as Wilson liked to put it, ‘salty’...or, more precisely... ‘salty as fuck’. Even though he’d had an amazing week with Shuri, the time without Steve was really starting to wear on him, and Flower Power Ned calling shotgun in the helicopter had pushed Bucky over the edge to the Land of Salt.

Now, Spider Boy was the kind of syrupy sweet kid who was _way_ too polite to call out Bucky for acting like an asshole (at least not without dancing around the subject for an hour or two first), and Ned was probably too scared to say anything...or oblivious...Bucky wasn’t sure which. But Shuri? Well, Miss Sizzle _loved_ speaking her mind, and she’d been poking at Bucky’s salty wolf fur all goddamn day. Judging by the amused sparkle in her eyes when she sunk the yellow ball in the corner pocket, Bucky estimated that he had five seconds left before she nudged his bristling chest hairs with the pointy end of her pool cue.

Skillfully flipping the stick across her shoulders, Shuri rested her arms over the top and quirked up an eyebrow.

Okay, maybe two seconds.

“Are you going to scowl all day?” she asked without hesitation.

Making a conscious decision not to answer, Bucky scowled even harder at the the strip of skin peeking out beneath her ‘shirt’ instead. Yesterday, she’d spent a few hours shopping with Parker, returning with a new pair of sneakers and a bag stuffed full of stereotypical novelty t-shirts. To Bucky’s horror, she’d immediately spread them out on the coffee table and had gleefully hacked them to bits with Steve’s brand new (meaning, never used) kitchen shears! As the cotton had been sliced, diced, braided, and knotted into teeny tiny tank tops destined to show off _way_ too much of Shuri’s stomach, Bucky’s blood pressure had shot through the fucking roof; complete with a twitching eyelids, pulsating temples, and shoulders that contracted like rubber bands with every single snip! She’d turned him into a dad. A stressed out, overprotective dad with an overwhelming desire to bundle her in a floor length wool coat that buttoned, velcroed, tied, and zipped up all the way to her chin!

Rocking the pool cue from side to side, Shuri sent a snarky little grin in his direction, and, suddenly, Bucky couldn’t stop himself from wondering what Becca’d been like at seventeen?

She’d only just celebrated her fifteenth birthday before Bucky’d shipped out; all long legs and potential when she’d hugged him at the dock, standing on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek for the last time. The hardest thing about losing his sister to the past was there was nobody to answer the thousands of questions that haunted Bucky's dreams. While Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes was busy doing his civic duty and getting inconveniently ‘killed’, was their mother home to tell Becca that she needed to put a cardigan over her sleeveless dress? Did their mother’s temples pound and her blood pressure spike when Becca’d gotten ready for her very first date? Or was she too tired from trying to make ends meet to pay attention?

Suddenly, Ned’s vaguely annoying voice interrupted Bucky’s overprotective dad thoughts. “He scowls all the time,” he declared, pivoting on his back foot to execute a slow motion pool cue/lightsaber swing over Parker’s head (whooshing sound effects included). “I’ve never seen any other expression on his face. He’s like, frozen that way.”

Parker absently batted the stick away like an annoying fly, which, come to think of it, was a pretty accurate description of Ned, and shot him a look that said, ‘bad move, man’.

No kidding.

On a less salty occassion, Bucky _might’ve_ let the remark slide, but, on this fine day, he was Salt  & Vinegar Potato Chips itching to burn the fuck out of someone’s lips.

“First off, Ned, I’m right here,” Bucky started, letting a tiny hint of his Russian accent slip into his vowels (just for fun). “Secondly, did you _mean_ to make a joke about me being frozen? ‘Cause, if you did, that was a real dick move.”

Scooching forward, Bucky assumed a pose designed for maximum intimidation: loosely tied boots planted wide, arms draped over the ripped knees of his jeans, clenched fists creaking from the pressure, and chin dropped to the perfect angle to make his eyes look extra intense. The intimidation pose _always_ worked, and, as predicted, Ned instantly ceased all lightsaber simulations.

“Thirdly, _Ned,_ I don’t understand why the hell you think you’re such an expert on my facial expressions since you’ve only met me _one_ other time...” Bucky threw in an extra little growl when he hissed, “ _...a_ _t a funeral!_ ”

Slapping her hand across her mouth, Shuri’s cheeks puffed out around her fingers, while Parker desperately elbowed the orange flowers on Ned’s ribs in a way that was supposed to be subtle, but was anything but. Trying his best to shut Ned up, Spiderling whispered, “Oh my god, dude, _s_ _top,_ ” through clenched teeth.

It didn’t work.

“But you’re _The Winter Soldier,_ ” Ned marveled, eyes huge as he stepped toward the couch like a fuzzy, slow moving moth to a very hot flame. “Scowling’s like, your trademark. It’s part of your whole ‘grumpy superhero package’. You’ve got the permanent scowl, the badass metal arm...which, to be honest, is _really_ sexy…”

Shuri dropped out of sight. Literally. One second she was there, and the next she’d dissolved into a puddle of laughter behind the pool table! That, combined with Parker’s desperate flailing, was making it harder and harder for Bucky to keep the salt on his chips.

Stupidly entering the danger zone of Bucky’s arm span, Ned kept right on digging his own hole. “And your hair...it’s always flying around like you’re a majestic lion with your own personal wind machine. Sometimes, when I see you on TV, I hear the song from ‘The Lion King’.”

 _“Ned…”_ Poor Parker looked like he was gonna cry...or pass out...or run for the hills...

“Then, after the zebras, and giraffes, and warthogs, and baboons, and all the other lions gather beneath the cliff, you flip your mane over your shoulder and sing about the circle of life with your perfectly smudged eyeliner...”    

Okay. That was it. The line in the sand, crossed by a kid with no self-preservation in a Beach Boys shirt.

“I don’t wear eyeliner!” Bucky snapped, pushing to his feet.

“Really?” Ned gasped. “Your eyes look like that, _naturally?_ ”

“Ned!” Parker hissed, resorting to whispering out of the side of his mouth like a bad ventriloquist. “Stop talking before the _very nice_ man, who _obviously_ doesn’t wear makeup, stops being nice!”

“But look at his eyes, Peter! They’re so smokey!”

Bucky didn’t know how to respond to that, or how he was supposed to deal with Shuri gleefully kicking her feet up in the air like a drunken fool, so he didn’t even try. Instead, he scrubbed his hand over his _naturally_ smokey eyes and held back a roar, because the whole scene was beyond ridiculous. Shuri had a good reason to be here: Stark wanted to get in some quality techno genius face time before she left tonight. Logical. Baby Spider had a solid reason to be here too: Shuri wanted his input on upgrading the Iron Spider suit with Black Panther tech so the kid didn’t have to get naked behind smelly dumpsters all the damn time. Also logical. Bucky was here because he wanted to make out with Steve the _second_ he got off the quinjet. _Very_ logical. But he didn’t have a fucking clue why Napalm Ned had come along for the ride! Seriously, how the hell had the kid gotten clearance to hitch a ride on the helicopter in the first place!? Didn’t a person need a badge or something before they were allowed to waltz around the compound, flipping pool cues around like they owned the place!?

“He’s gonna mess up his makeup,” Ned ‘whispered’.

Quickly pulling his hand back, Bucky stared at the incriminating black smudge on his thumb and snapped, “This shit is tactical!”

The pause was long and dramatic. Two jaws dropping to the floor as one set of eyeballs peeked over the edge of the pool table. It was too late, but Bucky shoved the evidence in his pocket anyway.

Ned (of course) was the first to break the silence, jumping on the bad ventriloquism bandwagon and ‘whispering’, “I knew it!”

Bucky tried to look mean. He really did. But it was hard to maintain the intimidation factor with his eyeliner smudged all over the fucking place and three unruly teenagers outing his secret love for makeup! Without his permission, the muscles of Bucky’s face twitched into a smile as he snatched a pool cue off the wall to perfectly execute an _actual_ lightsaber move; Darth Sidious style with an Obi-Wan beard.

Okay, so he and Steve _might have_ binge watched all eight movies in the span of two days...plus ‘Rogue One’...and they _might have_ broken the ends of their brand new mop and broom for a late night, rooftop duel. _Maybe._

Twirling the cue in a wide arc, Bucky sliced it through the air just above Ned’s head before pivoting around and sinking the blue ball in the side pocket and red ball in the corner with one perfect shot.

“Hey,” Parker whined, “that’s cheating!”

“Like all that weird spider bending shit you pulled a minute ago wasn’t? You basically did a backbend when you sunk the seven!” Bucky laughed, but the truth was, Spiderling still freaked him out a little bit. T’Challa shredding that motorcycle in Bucharest and shoving his vibranium claws in Bucky’s face? Shitty, but manageable. Stark blowing off his arm? Horrible, but he’d ended up with a killer upgrade from Shuri outta the deal, so he was calling that one a win. Natalia? Deep down, Bucky knew that she still loved him, even when The Soldier had been strangling her like a total dick, so...sorta manageable. But Spider Man? The kid had essentially shot spider jizz all over the place and completely disabled Bucky in less than twenty seconds. Not cool. Plus, the stories from his space adventure? That shit had been real deal. Bucky was beyond grateful that they were playing for the same team now.

Shuri ran the rest of the table, sinking the eight ball with a flourish before breaking out into an amazing dance. Despite his remaining salt, Bucky couldn’t help but chuckle when she shimmied in a circle around Parker and his sidekick.

They’d truly had a fantastic week: trying out new restaurants, taking Steve’s motorcycle to Fire Island to stroll along the Sunken Forest Boardwalk, waking up early to do yoga with the huge group of super yogis who met on the terrace in Bryant Park, scoring tickets to ‘Hamilton’ ( _and_ meeting the cast), and commandeering Stark’s workshop to upgrade the arm.

Rolling his shoulder in time with Shuri’s groove, Bucky was so damn happy that the metal didn’t feel like a burden anymore. The curves and angles weren't shameful or unwanted...something that had been bolted to him without concern for the pain it would cause. Not anymore. After Shuri’d woven her magic into his body, the fusion of vibranium to bone felt like a privilege.

Her latest additions were amazing. She’d increased the processing speed of the color shifters, and Bucky could instantly camouflage his arm with one thought; black, dark grey, the original silver, and she’d even tinkered for two extra hours to add ‘Road House Blue’ to the palette because she thought it was funny (it was). Shuri’d also given the kinetic energy converters embedded in the gold inlays a serious power boost, so the next time a Thanos-like threat showed up, Bucky could send him back to outer space with a single punch while Steve and the gang caught up on Netflix. Grinning, Bucky shifted his arm from silver to their special hue of blue as Shuri bumped their hips together.

“I know you like to dance, Bucky. Don’t think I’ve forgotten about Okoye’s birthday party.” Looping her arm around his waist, she sang, “All the white boys in the house get low…”

Yeah, right. Bucky’s jeans were _way_ too tight to get low...he’d learned that lesson the hard way when he’d split a pair right up the ass at that party (sans underwear)...so he settled on a little shoulder rock thing as Ned busted out the sprinkler. The kid needed serious help.

“I’m looking at two white boys, and one ‘not white’ boy with _horrible_ white boy dance moves, and not _one_ of you is getting low!? Unacceptable! FRIDAY, _please_ play something hot so I can fix this mess immediately!”

God, Bucky loved her. He really wished that she could stay longer and get to know Steve as more than just the ornery patient who kept trying to sneak out of his hospital bed in Wakanda. There was no doubt in Bucky's mind that Steve would instantly adore her too. It would only take an afternoon at the museum, or a few hours spent squeezing their butts into tiny swings at the playground, for Steve's affection to grow enough to pull his superior dad voice out of his khaki pocket and nix the skimpy tank tops forever.

Smiling a little when a heavy beat blasted out of the speakers, Bucky let himself sway as he drifted back to the best parts of their excellent week. The quiet moments when they’d just hung out, listening to their new records and talking about everything and nothing at the same time. Of all the things that Shuri had taught him in Wakanda, talking had been the most important one. First she’d helped him figure out how to stop clamming up entirely, and then she’d shown him how to stop saying words he didn’t mean to cover up the ones he did. You know, _actually_ talking...not rambling about blowing train money on stuffed bears for redheads named Dot...but being honest about feelings, nightmares, fears, regrets, _love,_ and truly listening in return. Bucky wasn’t perfect at it yet, not by a long shot, but he was working on it.

Watching Shuri trying (and failing) to get lower than super bendy Parker, and Ned trying (and failing) to do some approximation of the running man, Bucky was about to show them some real moves when, suddenly, Becca was in the room...

 

_“If you think I’m gonna let you step all over poor Dolores Gallagher’s feet at this dance, you’re sorely mistaken, Bucky Barnes.” His sister’s cheeks were rosy from patiently demonstrating the steps a hundred times in the middle of their tiny living room. “Now, get off that couch and let me teach you! You almost broke Connie’s toe the last time!”_

 

She was standing in the shadows behind Ned. Her dark brown curls messy after a long day at school, a dusting of summertime freckles sprinkled across her cheeks, the dip in her chin a perfect match for Bucky’s, and her feet swimming in the high heels she’d borrowed from their mother to teach him how to dance. Everything in the room got hazy as the remnants of his sister spun in a circle, arms outstretched; the memory of her pale green, polka dot dress mingling with Ned’s awkward legs. It tore Bucky apart to remember how the crisp fabric of her skirt had sounded swishing against his trousers, but he closed his eyes and let himself hear it...if only for a second...before she was gone.

After Becca’s dance lesson, Bucky’d never stepped on a girl’s toes again.

Wandering backwards, he collapsed into the couch and threw his feet up on the coffee table on either side of the decimated tray of nachos. He needed a minute (maybe more than a minute) to process the pressure in his chest. If he wanted the tightness to go away, he had to acknowledge it. That’s how it worked.

It wasn’t like Bucky’d ever had any illusions about making it back to his sister (or to Steve for that matter). From the minute he’d heard about the attack on Pearl Harbor, he’d known that he’d been destined to die in that war. Moments before shipping out, he’d smoothed out his jacket, straightened his hat, and had managed to make an uneasy peace with truly becoming Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes of the 107th. Even if that meant coming home in a box...or never coming home at all. Becca was gonna grow up, find herself a good man, and get married without a big brother to walk her down the aisle in place of their dead father. Eventually, she’d have children of her own who’d ask lots of questions about the stranger in the faded pictures on her mantle. She’d have good stories to tell about their dead Uncle Buck, faking a smile (like good mothers do) when she told them how hard it was to teach that clumsy boy how to stop crushing girl’s toes. As Bucky’d crossed the ocean, the water getting darker as the waves had gotten bigger, he’d hoped... _prayed even..._ that someday his ghost would have the honor of watching Becca teach her own son how to dance.

But the cruelness of surviving…learning about his sister’s wonderfully ordinary life like she’d only existed in the pages of a dusty history book...well, that was something Bucky hadn’t bargained for.

Wiping at the corners of his eyes, he didn’t care if he made the eyeliner disaster worse, because dammit, he was gonna miss Shuri like crazy after she’d flown home to her real big brother.

While Shuri, Parker, and Ned danced and joked around like idiots, Bucky stared at the tiny tattoo filling the space above the crook of his thumb. The bright red heart had lasted approximately twelve _very exciting_ hours before the serum had started to eat it; the color fading to a blotchy pink as the days had passed. The black outline and the little ’S’ in the middle had fared better, but the crisp lines that the artist had copied from Steve’s drawing had spread out, changing from black, to purple, to the kind of pale blue lines that you see clinging to faded eagles etched into the skin of soldiers from decades past.

Shuri’s voice suddenly interrupted his thoughts.

“Turn down the volume, FRIDAY.”

He sighed, because she always knew. It was one of her many gifts: the right thing to say, the right time to listen, the right time to dance, the right time to turn down the music...

Keeping his eyes on the fading heart, Bucky muttered, “At this rate, it’s gonna be gone by the time Steve gets here.”

“They’re landing in ten minutes, dude.” Parker plopped down on the table and scooped up a glob of cold cheese with his finger.

“I know, but look!” Thrusting his arm up in the air, he waved it around for all to see.

Ned leaned in to investigate, drops of sweat _literally_ falling off his forehead and landing on the armrest. “It kinda looks like a cherry popsicle dripped on your hand and you forgot to wash it off.”

Bucky was gonna slap him.

“Or, like you were climbing a tree and got bit by a very small squirrel.”

Bucky was gonna slap him twice; from both directions like an aristocrat.

“Ned!” Shuri scolded, shoving the disgusting nachos across the table and out of Parker’s reach. “Can’t you see that Bucky is upset that the ink has faded?”

“Yeah, asshole!” Bucky snapped, barely containing his slap happy hand. “I’m upset!”

Demonstrating her penchant for multitasking, Shuri simultaneously yelled, “Bucky! You shouldn’t call kids ‘assholes’!” and blocked Parker’s second attempt at nabbing the nacho remains.

She was right. It wasn’t nice. But, if it looks like an asshole and talks like an asshole...

“Peter,” Ned whispered, his expression suggesting that river of piss was already running down his legs. “ _T_ _he Winter Soldier_ just called me an asshole, and I’m like, _really_ scared right now.”

“You should be!” Bucky growled. Smeared tactical eyeliner be damned, he gave Ned his ‘I’m gonna slit your throat’ stare as the salt truck pulled up to dump a fresh layer all over his vinegar skin. If Steve was here, he’d rip Bucky a new one.

Always the peacemaker, Shuri stepped across Bucky’s legs, squished up against him, and gave his thigh a little squeeze before asking point blank, “Are you okay?”

That was a very interesting question, which, honestly, depended on his point of reference. Compared to five years ago? Absolutely! Right now? He wasn’t really sure. 

Turning to Shuri and only Shuri, Bucky tried his best to ignore the pale green, polka dot dress covering her knees. “Yeah,” he started, “I’m just gonna miss you, that's all.”

Shuri gave him ‘the look’; another one of the many skills hanging from her tool belt. Her eyes said, ‘You are _so_ full of shit, and we _will_ talk about it later’, even though her mouth said, “Well, I think you already know that I’m going to miss your sorry white butt too.” Kissing his cheek, she said, “Lucky for you, a certain handsome, blond _husband_ is almost home to make you feel better. Peter! Stop being disgusting! Go get something else from the kitchen!”

The dork was standing there with a finger full of sour cream and cold beans. He didn’t even blink when a big glob fell onto the carpet.

Bucky really needed Steve to be back...like _now._ “FRIDAY,” he groaned, “how long?”

“Twenty-one minutes less than the last time you asked, Sir Bucky.”

Ned, whose attention span was shorter than a gnat, collapsed onto the love seat and went full surfer mode, matching his shirt perfectly when he asked, “Woah, dude, you’re a knight too!?”

Snorting (again), Shuri threw her feet across Bucky’s lap. She was wearing her new Adidas, white with red stripes, but all Bucky could see was a pair of heels two sizes too big.

“Well, he _is_ a warrior,” she declared. “In my country, he’s known as the White Wolf.”

Totally ignoring Shuri’s very interesting fact, Parker spider jumped on the back of the couch next to Ned and started rambling...and rambling...and rambling. “A knight!? That’s funnier than you could possibly know because Mr. Bucky _really_ dug that Guy Ritchie King Arthur movie!” He snapped his fingers a million times, like the sound helped him think or something. “Charlie Huna-something...Jude Law chewing up the scenery...shoot, what was that movie called?”  

“Legend of the Sword!” Ned exclaimed, going in for the high-five, which Parker _obviously_ returned.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. ‘Legend of the Sword’! We watched it with Miss Widow and Mr. Sam after all the Thanos…” Peter drifted off, meeting Bucky’s eyes before wisely shifting course. “I mean, um, we saw it right after I got zapped back from outer space, when Mr. Steve was still stuck in the infirmary upstairs. And, I might get in trouble for saying this...like really big trouble...but I’m pretty sure that Mr. Bucky was _super_ into King Arthur’s sword.”    

“Excalibur?”

Why did Ned always seem like he was talking in slow motion? It was really weird. Oh, and Parker was in deep shit. The deepest!

Apparently, it was Parker’s turn to snort; so hard, in fact, that he almost snorted himself right off the back of the couch. “Yeah, sure,” he drawled, chuckling like the little shit he was. “If that’s what you wanna call it.”

Shuri’s eyes bounced from Peter, to Ned, to Bucky, and back around the circle two more times. “Is someone going to fill me in?”

“I think Peter’s talking about the King’s…” Ned grabbed a throw pillow, holding it in front of his face before he whispered, “ _penis._ ”

“You know what!?” Bucky snapped, setting Shuri’s legs on the floor before standing up and straightening his very tight, fashion forward t-shirt. “For the first time in my life, I’m ‘allowed’ to be gay, and if I wanna drool over a very attractive actor with rock hard abs and excellent sword skills, I can! And FRIDAY, you’re an asshole too. That twenty-one minute joke is old! Tell Stark you need some new material!”

When Bucky got pissed, the typical human reaction was boot quaking fear. Dictators begging for their lives, mercenaries shitting their pants while The Soldier dangled them off ten-story buildings, or entire squadrons throwing up their arms and surrendering, simply because Bucky’d cocked his gun. So, it would be considered an _atypical_ response for an African princess to roll up into a tiny little ball like a cackling hedgehog, or for a kid that weighed one-thirty soaking wet to get his eyebrows stuck to his perfect hairline while making the penultimate ‘O’ face. And it _definitely_ wasn’t the norm for a dork in a hideous floral shirt to stare at Bucky like a _very_ healthy deer in the headlights while shoving the last of the broken nachos in his mouth!

Not one to leave well enough alone, FRIDAY joined in on the 'fun', pretending to sound sorry when she announced, “Would you forgive me if I informed you that the quinjet is two minutes out, Sir White Wolf of Wakanda?”

Shuri fell off the couch (like her laughing hedgehog impression wasn’t sufficient). Bucky didn’t appreciate it.

“He’s totally gonna kill us now,” Ned whispered. “My sidekick sense can feel it. Peter, look! The hairs on my arms are standing up and everything.”  

The weirdo actually held out his arm.    

That was it. Bucky couldn’t help it. He cracked up with the rest of the asshole brigade, because it was true. All of it. His tattoo _did_ look like a cherry popsicle stain, he _had_ been asking about Steve every twenty-one minutes for the past week and a half, and, after that movie, Bucky _had_ totally jerked off three times in a row fantasizing that he was King Arthur in leather pants and Steve was his secret lover!

 

... _Sir Steve, after sneaking through the castle in the dead of night to enter the King’s chambers, slowly climbed into the four poster bed, begging King Bucky to wield his powerful sword till dawn..._

 

On cue, the jet came into view over the eastern tree line. Yes! Sir Steve had returned from his quest for the Holy Grail! Bucky transformed into an overexcited puppy, running around in circles, jumping up and down, and slobbering all over the windows as the quinjet made its final rotation over the landing pad. Steve was home! Steve was home! Steve was home!

“I guess you don’t always scowl,” Ned quipped, inexplicably standing half an inch from Bucky with his nose pushed up against the glass. “Shockingly, it doesn’t like, mess with your mystique.” He gave Bucky a once over, his approval pending. “I guess even the bravest of lions need to let their manes down sometimes.”

“You are the weirdest person I’ve ever met.” Bucky clapped the kid on the back, right in the middle of the biggest flower. “And that includes the deranged, power hungry Nazi who peeled off his face right in front of me.”

“Really? Wow, that’s awesome! Thanks!”

Bucky blinked, giving up completely as the wheels hit the tarmac.

Pretending to walk calmly towards the elevator, he pushed the down button as slowly as possible to avoid suspicion, but, when the doors took more than half a second to slide open, he started banging the thing with his metal hand.

Three sets of eyes focused on him.

“What!?” Bucky snapped. “It’s too slow!”

“Dude,” Parker scoffed, leaning against the wall next to the button. “No disrespect, but it’s been, like, two seconds.”

“I’m taking the stairs!” Turning on his heel, Bucky took off running just as the bell dinged, but he didn’t stop. Steve was home! He didn’t have time for a goddamn elevator!

Skipping half the steps on the three flights down to ground level, he slammed into the wall, cracking the shit out of it before pulling a full stop. He should’ve kept moving, because a massive bundle of nerves showed up out of nowhere; little butterflies dive-bombing the lining of his stomach as he took a minute to smooth back his hair, making sure that none of it had fallen out of his kickass viking bun. A piece of broken concrete fell to the floor as he pulled his jeans up over his ass. Maybe Steve could lean an umbrella in front of it?

Laughing at his own excellent joke, Bucky ignored the stinging butterflies and strolled through the door, causal as could be, like he hadn’t just run a thousand miles an hour and destroyed a perfectly good wall to see his... _husband._ God, that still sounded weird. Perfect...but weird. Okay. Bucky blew out a deep breath, raspberry sound included, and rounded the corner to the main landing pad, arriving just in time to watch the door lowering from the belly of the plane as teenage hooligans pointed and laughed from the retaining wall they’d perched on.

“Don’t worry, Sir Bucky,” Parker yelled, “we won’t tell him you were running.”

“And I’ll only send my brother the security footage if you renege on your promise to let me plan the party.” Shuri raised her phone in the air and waved it around.

Techno geniuses. God help him.

The assholes were still babbling, but Bucky tuned everything out as Steve’s feet came into view, then his knees, then his thighs! He was wearing black cargo pants with an obscenely tight black t-shirt that said ‘Guess what’s under my kilt’ in big white letters. Weird, since Steve was _Irish,_ but the stinging butterflies instantly switched to horny butterflies, because that was one party game that Bucky’d be _more_ than willing to play! When Steve’s face _finally_ appeared beneath the fuselage, he looked tired and serious until he spotted Bucky. Then he transformed into an overexcited puppy too, not even trying to pretend that he was too cool to gallop across the tarmac into Bucky’s arms.

The instant he smelled Steve’s sweaty skin and felt the burn of his scruffy beard against his cheek, Bucky dropped all pretenses of being too cool to wag his tail. It didn’t matter that the ground crew was rushing out to meet the team, or that three teenage assholes were holding up their phones to record whatever happened next. Bucky grabbed the sides of Steve’s face and pulled him into a wonderfully dirty kiss; tongue, bodies rubbing together, ass grabbing, maybe a moan or two, before he leaned back just enough to murmur, “God, I missed your stupid face.”

Steve opened his mouth to respond, but, before he could get a word out, Bucky grabbed his hand and dragged him like a hard won prize towards the door. Stark was yelling something, which Bucky happily ignored. He was too busy running past the paparazzi, gleefully flipping them all off as he yelled, “Send _that_ to T’Challa!”

*****

 

Bucky shifted the 1970 Dodge Challenger R/T into second gear as they hit the ramp to the I-87. It was a beautiful car: shiny, loud, powerful, and _purple._ Stark was super nice for ‘letting’ them borrow it. Cracking his window as the car hugged the curve, Bucky chuckled a little. He hadn’t ‘borrowed’ a car this nice since 1969, when the Boss 429 Mustang had been fresh off the line. But, seriously, there was no way that two over-excited, horny puppies were gonna sit around waiting for Stark to get done with Snap, Crackle, and Pop so they could take the helicopter back to the city.

“So, how are you gonna explain hotwiring Tony’s favorite muscle car?”

Steve had reclined his seat more than halfway back (Shuri'd call it pimpin’), his thighs were spread wide with his knees bumping the dash, and his silver aviators were reflecting nothing but blue sky and puffy clouds. It was hard not to get distracted by Steve's serious movie star appeal. 

“He _wanted_ me to take it,” Bucky deflected. “He was just too busy talking shop with Shuri to run off and fetch me the key.”

Sinking even lower in the leather seat, Steve stared at Bucky over his shades: syrupy sweet, eyes twinkling, his sexy beard growing impossibly thicker with each passing mile. The whole package made Bucky’s fingers tingle. His dick too. In fact, it was roaring to life in his jeans as Bucky accelerated, instantly reaching full throttle when Steve murmured, “You know, Buck, I really missed you.”

“God, I missed you too,” he blurted out a little too fast, his eagerness getting more and more obvious by the second. _Like really obvious._ In fact, Bucky had to make a quick adjustment to _his_ stick shift before he could push the car into third.

More and more, when it came to Steve, _everything_ seemed to be moving really fast. Bucky’s feelings, his moods, the things he’d buried...or that others had buried for him...rushing back into his brain like pulses of lifesaving blood to a hand that had fallen asleep.

“You know, it’s funny,” Bucky started. “Considering that we’ve spent the majority of the past seventy-five years apart, it’s amazing how fast it became unbearable to not have you around twenty-four-hours a day. I mean, look at you over there! Artfully messy hair, biceps giving that dirty shirt a real workout...you're such a gorgeous, perverted humanitarian.”

“Just doing my part.” Steve grinned, rolling his window down and sticking his entire arm into the slipstream. “So, Buck. A little birdy named FRIDAY told me that the whole time I was gone, you acted like a super annoying kid on a road trip, driving his parents crazy asking ‘Are we there yet? Are we there yet?’ every _twenty-one_ minutes.”

“Wow,” Bucky scoffed, edging the car into the left lane to find the engine’s sweet spot. “Remind me not to send FRIDAY a Christmas card.”

“You’ve never sent a Christmas card in your entire life!”

“Well, this was gonna be the year, seeing as I have _friends_ now.”

“Oh yeah?” Steve deadpanned. “How were you planning on addressing the envelope? Seeing as she’s a _computer._ ”

Laughing wholeheartedly, Bucky shifted into fourth and pushed the speedometer past a hundred, loving the smell of the fresh air rushing into the car and the sight of the clouds reflecting on the shiny purple hood as they whizzed past. Something about the changing pattern sparked a warm feeling in his stomach, the speed and ease of it all pushing Bucky towards a new place of happiness. Weaving around a semi on the right, he smiled like an idiot, because Steve was home, in every sense of the word.

Steve’s hand drifted past the shifter to rest on Bucky’s thigh, squeezing a little before he asked, “Did FRIDAY tell you that I drove her nuts too?”

“No, she didn't,” Bucky grumbled, not sure if he should feel betrayed or impressed by FRIDAY’s level of sass. “I'll just go ahead and that to my list of reasons for cancelling Christmas for a certain AI.”

“It’s true.” Steve edged his fingers up a little higher, which was very, very, very nice. “I wouldn’t stop bugging her about what _you_ were doing. Yesterday, she said that I’d been asking, on average, 4.3 times per hour.”

In the past month, Bucky’d learned something about his cheeks. It was possible for them to physically _hurt_ from smiling so much. They were doing it again, happily aching as he grinned wide enough to split his lip, just like he had when a group of strangers had raised their dollar beers to toast their wedding day. The old guy in desperate need of dentures slumped against the jukebox. The beat cops sitting at the end of the bar, slamming shots after a long shift. The bartender with the big beer belly and even bigger beard. Denise the waitress in her denim vest. And even the four biker guys playing poker in the corner, had all joyfully clinked their bottles together to celebrate the union of two men. It blew Bucky’s mind that such a motley crew of human beings, who only knew ‘Cap and Bucky’ from seriously biased news reports, had offered nothing but celebratory smiles (with and without teeth).

God, this time, this world, every part of it was beyond anything that Bucky could have imagined at age twenty-three. Taking another peek at his sexy husband, Bucky knew, without a doubt, that getting the chance to experience this century with Steve made every ounce of suffering worth it.

Gently squeezing Bucky’s thigh, Steve nodded at the dash. “You trying to make this thing fly?”

“Huh?” He glanced down and, yeah, he was going one-forty. “Oh, shit.”

“Yeah, especially since you just blew past a cop at that last overpass.” Steve laughed, pushing his sunglasses on top of his head as he craned his neck to look behind them. “So, my suggestion is that you just go right ahead and pull this baby over and wait for them to catch up.”

“No, I should go faster!”

“Bucky…”

“But I stole the car!” Panic was rising. The fight or flight reaction that was part of his DNA long before The Soldier, long before the serum, taking over and deciding his next step.

“Bucky…”

“The steering column's fucking cracked, Steve! The wires are hanging out!”

“Bucky…”

He looked in the rearview. The red and blue lights might be way the hell back there, but they sure as hell were flashing! Old habits die hard, and Bucky’s foot automatically pushed harder...one-forty-five...the car vibrated, the engine willing, but the freeway too rough to handle the speed...one-forty-eight.

Steve didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. All it took was one more subtle squeeze for logic to catch up. Downshifting, Bucky had to weave around a few cars in the time it took for the red needle to drop back to double digits. They still flew across the Tappan Zee Bridge, passing a motorcycle like it was standing still before Bucky pulled in behind a minivan and coaxed the engine back down to fifty, forty-five...another squeeze and Bucky was able to jerk the car onto the rocky shoulder and slide to a stop just past the bridge. The guy on the motorcycle waved like a total dick when he drove past.

“You okay?” Steve asked quietly over the purr of the engine.

Bucky was trying, _really trying,_ to take his foot off the gas. His right boot was jamming the brake into the floor, but the left one kept tapping the pedal, revving the engine just enough the feel the power...the potential for escape. He squeezed his hands around the wheel so hard that the leather creaked.

“What’s that on your hand?”

Steve’s voice sounded far away, coming from somewhere near the flashing lights. They were a mile back, closing fast, ready to put Bucky back in his cage. He tried to think of Shuri, Wakanda...the lake that he’d sat next to every morning at dawn, the chirping sounds of the bats returning to their caves, the purple light coloring the sky before the sun appeared...suddenly, a big truck honked its horn as it drove past, the air current shaking the Challenger like a piece of paper.    

“Hey.” Steve poked the spot just below Bucky’s thumb, rubbing at it like he was trying to get off a stain. “Is this a…?” Licking his thumb, mom style, Steve actually tried to wipe it off. The lights were at 1500 yards. “Bucky, is this a tattoo?”   

“What?”

“Bucky Barnes, is this a heart?” He pushed his body across the console as far as it would fit and squinted at Bucky’s hand.

High speed approach. 1050 yards.

“No, it’s a popsicle stain.”

“This is a heart with an ‘S’ in it!” he exclaimed. “‘S’ for Steve!”

“Yeah, genius. ‘S’ for Steve.” 700 yards. Bucky couldn’t tear his eyes away from the side mirror. There were two cars, not one. The second car half a mile behind the other. They always sent more than one to try and capture The Winter Soldier. Usually twenty...fifty...armored cars with mounted machine guns. Shifting his gaze through the sunroof, he expected the helicopter to come into his line of sight at any second…

The first car swung in behind them, and the steering wheel cracked from the pressure of his metal hand; snapping right in two.

“Woah. Okay, hey…” Reaching under the wheel, Steve quickly disconnected the green and red wires to kill the engine. “Hey, hey, it’s okay. Take a breath.”

Steve gently tried to unwind Bucky’s fingers, boring and not-boring from the broken wheel, but, when they didn’t budge, he leaned across the shifter and rolled down Bucky’s window instead. “Bucky, put your arm on the edge of the window. The officers are walking up now, one on either side, and they need to see it.”  

Everything told him to run. Wait 1.5 seconds until lead officer is in line with the door. Use arm to punch door outwards, knocking target in front of approaching SUV in right lane. Pull knife from boot sheath. Push Steve out of line of fire. Throw knife end over end through open window at secondary target before weapon can be discharged. Aim for carotid artery. Targets eliminated. Touch yellow wires together to restart vehicle. Escape down empty freeway ahead of pile-up instigated by SUV accident.

It was always there. It didn’t matter that Shuri’d stripped the trigger words from his mind and had taught him how to herd goats! Even with the talking, the meditation, the yoga, the happiness of loving Steve...it was all fucking there! _It didn’t matter_ if his boring hand was inked with a sappy, joyful heart. The metal one, by no fault of its own, still defaulted to ultraviolence.

“Sweetheart…”

Steve had never called him that before.

“...put your arm out the window. You can do it…”

He wanted to be sweet...sweet like cherry popsicles dripping on a sunny day, sweet like strawberry jelly smeared across a scrap of paper, sweet like a heart...a sweetheart…

“Sir, hands where I can see them! Now!”

Leaning back slowly, Steve released Bucky’s hands and raised his own. “Officer. I’m Captain Steve Rogers and this is Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes…”

The officer’s hand dropped to his weapon as the second car swerved onto the shoulder ahead of them. Bucky’s metal fingers flexed instinctively, the arm shifting to inky black as he broke off half the wheel in the shape of a crescent moon.

“I said, put your hands up!”

The officer on Steve’s side drew her weapon, aiming the Glock at Steve as the doors burst open on the vehicle blocking their exit. Unacceptable.

“Please,” Steve said calmly in his Captain America voice. “My husband has severe PTSD. If you’ll just back away for a moment…”

Husband...

“There’s no danger, he just needs a minute…”

“He’s crushing a steering wheel! Don’t move! Keep your hands where they are!”

“Bucky, I love you...look at me. Look at me.” Even in his desperation, Steve sounded so sweet. Funny how Bucky’d kept his shit together when he’d been overrun by thousands of aliens dog monsters, but he was losing it in the presence of four humans with guns.

His boring hand bent the other half of the wheel like melted taffy, and Bucky wondered if things like this would ever stop? Unable to release his grip, Bucky whispered, “I found a little drawing of a heart in our room, the one with the ‘S + B’ in the middle…”

“Captain Rogers, step out of the vehicle…” Two more weapons drawn. One aimed at Steve, three at Bucky.

“Tell me, Steve. Did you color it with lipstick or jelly?”

The officer on the passenger side opened Steve’s door.

“It was raspberry filling from a jelly donut.” Steve didn’t move. “And, after we sort this out, we should stop for a whole dozen. We can get powdered sugar stuck in our beards.”

“I’d like that.”

Two officers closing in on Bucky’s side, the lead reaching for the handle on the driver’s side door…

“C’mon, sweetheart, you can’t hold a broken steering wheel and eat a jelly donut at the same time…”

Bucky, despite everything his body was telling him to do, slowly turned his head to look into Steve’s eyes, and there it was...that tiny smile. There was such power in the little dimples in the corners, the slight crease in his brow, the way his eyes twinkled even when the world was pitch black...and Bucky felt both hands release, raising up into the air like they were weightless as the shattered pieces fell into his lap.

*****

 

They’d picked this couch because it was big enough for both of them to spread out, but mostly they huddled together in the corner like two Great Danes trying to squeeze onto one cat bed. Bucky was propped up on the cushions with Steve happily squished between his legs and leaning back against his chest. The empty box of donuts was flipped upside-down next to Steve’s feet; the trail of powdered sugar following the curve of his shins, then zig-zagging over Steve’s black basketball shorts, and, finally...deliciously...running up the center of Steve’s naked chest to his mouth. And yes, little bits of powder had gotten stuck in his chest hair _and_ his beard. It was the best kind of winter wonderland.

After they’d devoured the donuts, Steve had pulled both of Bucky’s hands over his shoulders and had planted them firmly on his chest (one on each pec) to give them a thorough examination.

“Make it turn blue again.”

Instantly, the change started at the shoulder joints and quickly spread down to the tips of the fingers. Silver to ‘Road House Blue’ in the blink of an eye.

“Shuri made you cooler than a chameleon, except you can only camouflage one arm. I can see it now: you’re in a pinch, up against a black wall and you shift the color, thinking that the enemy will walk right past you...but it just looks like you’re standing there with only one arm.” Steve snorted and a cloud of powdered sugar exploded off his chest.

“So I’m _not_ cooler than a chameleon?”

“Well, maybe fifteen percent of you is…”

Rolling his eyes, Bucky kissed the top of Steve’s slightly damp head. Once the freaked out Uber driver had dropped them off after the police debacle...and Bucky’d finished freaking out that _he’d_ freaked out...they’d taken a shower together to try and decompress. Now Steve’s hair smelled like mint. “I still can’t believe they impounded the car.”

“Well, it wasn’t like we could drive the thing without a steering wheel,” Steve snickered. “And, let’s be honest, we’re lucky that impounding the car was the only thing they did…”

“Thanks to you. I’ve gotta say, you certainly know how to pull that charming Captain America persona outta your back pocket when you need it. It saved our asses today.”

“Naw, I think they were too scared to try and arrest a guy whose arm can disappear like magic. I mean, how on Earth would they keep the handcuffs on?”

The humor was sweet, the banter easy, but Bucky was still scared. It had been the worst episode he’d had since Wakanda, the worst Steve had ever seen, and doubt had wormed its way in; unbidden, unwelcome, and sitting on Bucky’s shoulder like a fucking asshole. But they had bellies full of donuts, and Steve was hilarious, so Bucky set it aside best he could and lightly flicked Steve’s nipple with his boring hand. “Are you done?”

“Not even close.” He pulled Bucky’s blue fingers up to his lips, kissing each one before giving his full attention to the other hand. “So, is it a coincidence that your arm matches your fingernails?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Grabbing Bucky’s hand, Steve pushed it backwards towards Bucky’s nose. “I’m talking about the very obvious fact that your nails, although completely chipped, are painted a very distinctive dark blue.”

“Shuri did that.”

“Shuri wouldn’t do anything that you didn’t want her to do, so don’t even try that one, pal.”

Bucky took a second to look at each nail; the missing pieces of blue that had fallen off during the week, the way they’d grown a little too long… “I’m really gonna miss her.”

“I know. But at least we’ve got the dinner party tonight. We’ll give her a fantastic send off. I heard that Tony ordered a special cake.”

“It better not be the kind with a stripper in the middle that I’ve been hearing about,” Bucky blurted. “Shuri’s mature, but she’s not _that_ mature.”

“Who told you they put strippers in cakes?”

“Umm…” Good god. Bucky'd just outed himself. He may or may not have been doing some very detailed research…about...stuff.

“Bucky…”

“Fine...it was the internet. The internet told me.”

Tipping his head back even further, Steve gave Bucky a very serious upside-down stare. Judgmental or intrigued? Bucky wasn’t sure. But now he was thinking about strippers...and cake...and sex...

“You gonna tell me the story about this heart, or what?” Suddenly, the fading heart was pressed to Steve’s lips. He kissed it once, twice, three times, before licking a circle around it with the tip of his tongue.

... _muscular_ strippers with body oil... _cheesecake_ with white chocolate drizzle...Bucky hooking his arms around Steve’s knees to try all the wonderful things that the internet had shown him…

Steve sucked Bucky’s thumb into his mouth, and, oh yeah...things were about to happen.

Sliding his lips back to the tip of the blue nail, Steve whispered, “Tell me about this tattoo,” before sliding right back down.

“Jesus, Steve. Has the internet been telling you things too?”

“Maybe, but I’m not doing any of them until you tell me about the heart.”

A sexual ultimatum. That was new too.

“Um, okay. You were gone, and I missed you…” Steve moved on to the index finger, sliding it down his throat all the way to the knuckle. “Oh shit...um...I had serious morning wood, and I saw the little heart drawing you’d tacked up on the wall…”

Pulling back, Steve hummed. “Not sure how those two things go together, but go on…” Two fingers this time, gliding across the top of Steve’s warm tongue.

“And we...well, we don’t have rings, so I thought maybe a tattoo with your initial could be...like…” Three fingers, the little hairs from Steve’s moustache tickling Bucky’s knuckles, and holy shit, his dick was painfully hard beneath Steve’s back. When Steve rolled his body so top of his ass rubbed against him, Bucky forgot what words were. “Um...um…”

“You thought this little tattoo could be like what?” Teeth nibbling gently on the webbing just above the tattoo, the muscles in Steve’s back flexing just right. “Hmm, Buck?”

“Jesus Christ.”

Steve slowly flipped over, looking mischievous as shit as he licked a line from Bucky’s belly button all the way up to _his_ powdered sugar chest hair. The second that Steve used the tip of his tongue to lick the powder off Bucky’s nipple, he almost came. Seriously, no lie, he almost came in his pants like a teenager.

“I think what you’re trying to say is that this gorgeous tattoo is like a wedding ring. Am I on the right track?” Steve sucked the other nipple into his mouth, coming up for air with powdered sugar stuck to his nose and chin.

“You are _absolutely_ on the right track. Whatever the internet has taught you is _sooo_ on the right track.” Bucky moaned. He couldn’t help it. Steve had left for a humanitarian mission a man content with cuddling, making out, and slightly naughty spooning, and had returned a full on sex god. Obviously, Bucky’d been looking at the wrong websites! “Holy fuck, what are you doing with your tongue?”  

“Waiting for you to finish your story.”

“That’s waiting?”

He dragged his tongue back down Bucky’s chest and licked a line underneath his pec, lingering where the skin met metal. The nerve endings were more sensitive there, and Bucky could feel the tingling sensation all the way down to his toes. “Well,” Steve muttered, “more like _impatiently_ waiting…”

Bucky needed to concentrate. Five seconds. Focus. He’d never spit out so many words in such a short amount of time...

“I got the ‘S’ in the middle and I thought you could get the ‘B’ and it could be like wedding rings, but more special, ‘cause this heart is like us, simple, back to basics true love. But the serum is fucking up all the romance, and...oh god, there’s so much powdered sugar stuck in your beard! I just wanna lick it all off.” Bucky laughed, because it was fucking adorable. “Steve, can we please stop waiting. I’ve been waiting so damn long to touch you like this, and I just wanna...I just wanna do everything. Can we just do everything?”

The sunshine smile that spread across Steve’s face, with its powdered sugar frame, was one of the most wonderful things that Bucky’d ever seen, and everything finally slowed down; the anxiety of the day, the leftover tension from the freak out, the pounding pulse in his neck...all of it relaxed as Bucky raised both hands to lovingly stroke his thumbs over Steve’s apple cheeks. When Steve nuzzled into the motion, Bucky marveled that they were here...together.

“Bucky…”

“Can you call me ‘sweetheart’ again?”

Blushing, Steve did his shy little head shake. “I’m sorry, it just slipped out.”

“No, dipshit, I loved it!” Laughing, he shoved Steve backwards, using the momentum to flip him onto his back so Bucky could straddle his thighs. “Say it again.”

“Say _what_ again?”

Once a little shit, always a little shit.

Steve bit his lip, like he thought he was cute (he was), and his eyes darted down to his shorts (for obvious reasons), then at Bucky’s sweats (for _very_ obvious reasons). “Okay, sweetheart,” he whispered, rocking his hips the slightest bit. “Let’s do everything.”

He couldn’t grab Steve fast enough; his waist, his face, his ass, there were sugary hands everywhere, and Bucky still wanted more. When he ran his fingers along Steve’s waistband, the vibranium plates turned gold without his input. They’d never done that before, and he wondered if gold was the color of love?

“You’re so damn beautiful,” Bucky started, because he was; every inch of him. First, he carefully lifted Steve’s shorts over _his_ very insistent tentpole, throwing them at the TV along with the donut box that Steve had crushed with his head. Then Bucky just looked...took his sweet time touching the tops of Steve’s feet, mesmerized by the way the veins curved around his ankle bones, and exploring how the slightest pressure from his finger made them roll. He traced the vessels upwards by touch alone, staring into Steve’s eyes as he felt them disappear beneath the surface; hard bone turning into the sturdy muscles of his calves. Bucky wasn’t just talking about physical sensations when he whispered, “I can feel your heart beating.”

Spreading his fingers out to touch as much skin as possibly, Bucky slid both hands past Steve’s knees and ran them up his inner thighs, making the muscles quiver at every point of contact. Steve sucked in a breath when Bucky’s palms bracketed his dick, his thumbs pressing against the arteries in his groin. “Right here, Steve. I can feel it beating right here.”

“That’s not the only place it’s beating, Buck,” he moaned, trying to push his hips upward, but Bucky didn’t let him move. Not yet. Using just his thumbs, he controlled every ounce of Steve’s power as they both stared at his cock pulsing in time with his heartbeat.

“Don’t you worry, punk. I’m getting there.”

Nodding at his dick, Steve raised his eyebrows. “Are you gonna get there today?”

“Shh, I’ve waited almost ninety years for this. Lemme look for a second.”

Now, Bucky’d had sex before; a few girls when he was eighteen, twenty, twenty-two, but it was always fast and sloppy, over before it really started, and meaningless in the long run. Obviously, Steve had been with Peggy, and their relationship had been _anything_ but fast and sloppy. Steve loved Peggy. Really, who wouldn’t? Once Bucky had gotten to know her, he’d kinda loved her too. And he was fine with all of that. More than fine. But this? God, he was positive that neither of them had ever done anything like _this_ before.

Adrenaline spiking and mouth watering, Bucky pushed Steve’s knees even wider, adding pressure until he felt resistance from the tendons. Only then, did Bucky bend down to open his mouth for the first time. It took him a second to figure things out...a few minutes, actually...to get used to the taste, the feeling of spreading his jaw wide enough for Steve to fit, learning the best way to hold his lips and twist his hand…

Steve whimpered, so Bucky knew that he must be doing something right. And he whimpered even more when Bucky folded his body upward and used his tongue to try something else the internet had shown him.

“Jesus, I didn’t think you were gonna…”

Something hit him...pure love laced with uncontrollable desire….and Bucky couldn’t stop himself from shoving Steve’s hips even higher so his tongue could reach everywhere. One lick and Steve shut right up. “I said I wanted to do everything,” Bucky whispered as his chipped middle finger edged closer. “Licking you, and touching you here…”

“Oh, fuck.”

Bucky’d only pushed in a tiny bit, but Steve’s face, god, it was addictive. “...feeling the inside of your body...” Bucky continued, moving his hand. “...figuring out what makes you tick…what you like...what makes you moan...”

It didn’t take long to figure out that Steve liked a tongue/finger combo, and he responded accordingly, his eyes rolling back in his head as he relaxed around Bucky’s finger. Smiling, Bucky felt damn proud of himself as he kissed the spot where the curve of Steve’s ass met his thigh. The internet had taught him well. 

“For the love of god, Bucky, why aren’t we in the bedroom!?”

Bucky added another finger, just to see what happened. The results didn’t disappoint.

Without warning, Steve yanked on his viking hair; not sweetly, or nicely, but with something that Bucky could only characterize as unbridled lust. Hell yeah! Bucky could work with that!

They changed venues in a frenzy; toppling the coffee table, tripping on the rug, taking out Steve’s umbrella, and it didn’t take long for Steve to strip off Bucky’s sweats, dropping to his knees as he struggled to pull off his socks. “Lift up your foot, jerk. You can’t wear mismatched socks the first time we have sex!”

Bucky took a peek as he raised his right foot, confirming that he was, in fact, wearing one plain white sock and one with a blue stripe around the top. Oops. The second that Steve made the final tug on sock numero uno, he remembered…

“Uh, Bucky.”

Well, shit. Bucky stood there, foot suspended, dick sticking straight out at Steve’s forehead, with his pink toes on full display.

“Um, about that...do you wanna put the sock back on? Pretend that didn’t just happen? ‘Cause we can do that.”

Chuckling, Steve quickly lifted his chin and planted a kiss at the tip of Bucky’s dick, which was simply delightful.

“No,” Steve started, tapping the other foot and waiting for Bucky to switch before yanking off the striped sock with one quick tug. “Absolutely not.”

Then, swear to God, Steve Rogers, the former symbol of the great and powerful US of A, bent over and kissed the tops of all ten pink toes, giving Bucky a perfect view of his spine as it curved down to his perfect ass. God bless America.

“Okay, that’s it.” Bending down, Bucky scooped up the kinky bastard by his armpits and tossed him backwards onto the bed. He landed all sprawled out and sexy, and Bucky’s entire arm instantly turned bronze...which Shuri must’ve programmed to mean...incredibly turned on? Jesus, that didn’t seem right. They were gonna have words!

Beckoning Bucky with one seductive finger, Steve’s smile was decidedly devious as he wrapped his hand around his cock in a true ‘holy shit’ moment. Wow. This wasn’t gonna be _anything_ like sweet Dot Gallagher in the back of her daddy’s Cadillac!

“Earth to Bucky. Check the second drawer of my nightstand.”

“What?”

“Just do it.” Steve chuckled as he settled onto his back, dick sticking straight up.

He rounded the end of the bed, keeping one eye on Steve as he fiddled with the overabundance of shit in the drawer: pencils, more pencils, pencil sharpeners, a Glock 26, erasers, chapstick… “What the hell am I looking for? I mean, I’m quickly learning that you’re surprisingly kinky, Steve, but I’m not doing _anything_ with a gun or a pencil.”

“The bottle. Lube. We’re gonna need that, dork.”

“Oh, sorry if I didn’t notice the _lube_ tucked in the back corner behind the Glock.” Bucky threw it up in the air as he hopped onto the bed, flipping around and catching it behind his back as he kissed Steve’s stupid face. “Should I question your level of preparedness?”

“I told you, I was just waiting for you to ask. I’ve had a bottle, packet, or tin of lube with me ever since we were sixteen, Buck.”

“You said you were waiting for me to ask if I could _kiss_ you?” Carefully climbing on top, Bucky pressed their naked bodies together for the first time as he sucked on Steve’s neck.

“Yeah, that’s true. But after the kissing, I was hoping for more.” Steve ran his hands down Bucky’s sides and softly said, “And now, sweetheart, you’ve given me everything I’ve ever wanted.”

It’s funny how you can spend years with someone, loving the way they smile, picking up on their tells when you play poker for matchsticks, knowing how they’re gonna react before they make a move, but then, as soon as your bodies touch without barriers and walls, it feels like you’re meeting someone altogether new.

When Bucky cradled the back of Steve’s head and pushed into him for the first time, the look in his eyes was nothing short of liquid gold; rich, magical, and peaceful as Bucky looped his arms under Steve’s shoulders to pull them impossibly closer. And Bucky held him there for what felt like days, slowly pulsing into his body as Steve’s irises flowed like the gold and bronze in Bucky’s arm...

  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FYI: Writing Ned Leeds is my new favorite thing! :)
> 
> Thanks for reading everyone! I'd love to hear what you think, so throw those comments in that little box so we can chit chat! Cheers!


	3. The Bruised Heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, everyone! :)

 

Steve had a wonderful new habit that Bucky loved like crazy. In meetings about what they should do with the stones, what they should do about Steve doing whatever the fuck he wanted, what they should do about their new weirdo space allies, and what they should do about Bucky not paying attention in meetings, Steve would absently reach under the conference table and touch the remnants of the tattoo. And, whenever the team was galavanting around the globe on another ‘Steve does whatever the fuck he wants’ mission, the big lug would ‘casually’ sit next to Bucky on the jet and pull his gloves off, finger by finger, to stroke the popsicle stain as Natalia pushed past Mach 2. But Bucky’s favorite, by far, was waking up every morning with the faded heart pinched between Steve's thumb and index finger as he slept. The little squeeze felt like Steve didn’t wanna let Bucky go, even when he was drifting through the land of dreams.

Making a fist, he stretched the skin to stare at what was left. It wasn’t much. The red was almost completely gone, and the black lines had changed to the dullest blue, but, every time Steve caressed the faded heart, the colors still felt bright.

This morning was no exception. When Bucky’d cracked open his eyes, he’d instantly felt like a glorious rainbow explosion! Steve might have been sprawled out on his stomach (taking up eighty-four-percent of the bed), and he might’ve been snoring softly (sawing logs) and drooling all over his pillow, but the heart had been trapped between his fingers for safekeeping, the sweetness eclipsing the disgusting puddle of drool. That little gesture had started Bucky’s day off right. Blasting him with a shot of glorious happiness as he’d emitted the full spectrum of colors all over Steve’s delightfully naked ass!

But then, Steve’s other new habit had made an appearance; the one that Bucky _hated like crazy._ After naked wrestling, morning blow jobs, coffee, and cinnamon raisin bagels, Bucky’d watched Steve slip into his black cargo pants and a decidedly unfunny plain black t-shirt to go ‘help’ Sam and Natalia ‘gather intel’ on the next wave of space invaders, zombie babies, Hydra dildos, or some other ‘very important’ task that didn’t involve Bucky’s area of expertise. At least four or five days a week since Shuri’d left, Steve had toasted Bucky a bagel, kissed him goodbye, and charged down the stairs to climb into Natalia’s brand new, bright red Corvette ZR1. And, with each passing day, Bucky was having a harder and harder time keeping his warm, fuzzy rainbow from getting tainted by something darker. It sucked. Hard. Especially since this morning had been the darkest yet.

Whatever. He needed to think about something else. Something that didn’t involve cinnamon raisin bagels, and the sound of Natalia gunning the engine as she sped down the block.

Bucky was propped up against a support beam at the far end of the compound’s giant weapons testing warehouse. It was well past noon. The bagel had been digested long ago, so he was starving. And, if that wasn’t bad enough already, Stark and Spiderling were arguing about something technical and annoying on the raised platform at the other end. They’d been going at it for what felt like _hours_ , and the longer that Bucky stood here doing absolutely nothing, the darker the dark thing got.

“Hey!” Bucky yelled. “Do I have time to order a pizza? Maybe sit down, get cozy, read the ‘Prisoner of Azkaban’, take a fuckin’ nap?”

“That’s the best Harry Potter book, by far,” Stark hollered back. “Harry gets all depressed, Dementor problems, Hermione bitch slaps Malfoy, and, spoiler, Sirius Back was framed! He’s gonna end up as Harry’s bestie...until he dies, of course.”

“Dude!” Spider-Boy was staring at Stark like he was a total dick (which he was). “You just spoiled the entire plot!”

“Naw, they’re all the same. You’ve read one eight-hundred-page wizard book, you’ve read them all. Harry’s psychically connected to ugly Ralph Fiennes, Emma Watson is smarter than everyone...kinda like Shuri...Tim Burton’s wife chews up the scenery before _and_ after killing Gary Oldman, and it ends with an older, less cute version of Daniel Radcliffe killing No Nose Ralph with the the Infinity Gauntlet. Blah, blah, blah.”

Bucky was gonna shoot him. The great and powerful Iron Man had survived Thanos’ sword, only to meet his end because he’d spoiled the Harry Potter books _and_ the goddamn movies for The Winter Soldier! For fuck’s sake, he and Steve had only made it to the second film!

“I’m gonna kill you,” he muttered under his breath.

“Nope, you’re reformed!” Stark was like the CIA (ears everywhere). “Plus, we have _much_ more important things to do today, like testing my mind-bogglingly brilliant new toys!”

Ignoring Bucky’s death stare, Stark went back to messing with whatever gadget was on the table in front of them, poking Spidey in the ear while the poor kid attempted to do something with a screwdriver. It didn’t look like they were gonna ‘need’ Bucky’s services anytime soon, so he slid down the pole, folded up his knees, and closed his eyes.

Shuri’d been gone for almost a month, which sucked, but whenever Bucky pictured her sassy smile, visions of sparkling fireworks and panicked people knocking over wine glasses popped into his head to cheer him up. In fact, if he sucked in a deep enough breath, he could still smell sulfur and chocolate.

While Shuri’s cake had been stripper free (thank god!), it _had_ featured eight obnoxious fountain style fireworks courtesy of Party Master Stark. Of course, the well-meaning idiot hadn’t bothered to warn the restaurant in advance like a normal person would’ve, and he’d also neglected to inform the heroes, wizards, witches, assassins, and potential Hulks of his new, surprisingly explosive, low temperature fireworks. Needless to say, the instant the shimmering silver sparks had erupted towards the ceiling, landing all over the likes of Wanda, Banner, and Thor, the magical shit had hit the proverbial fan.

Idiot Man had tried (and failed) to sell The God of Thunder punching a giant cake as just your average, run-of-the-mill Friday night occurrence, but the dinner crowd’s general consensus had been to run screaming into the middle of East 19th Street. But Bucky hadn’t moved an inch. Not when the fire alarm had gone off. Not when somebody’d flipped over an entire table ($50 Filet Mignons included). And not when Wanda’d thrown up a force field to contain the sparks. Nope. He’d happily sat in his rainbow chair, smiling like a dork as he’d stuck his fork into a big hunk of cake that had flown in his general direction. Why? That was easy. The glittering fireworks had perfectly matched Bucky’s mood _._

Making love to your _husband_ for the first time will do that to a guy. Honestly, making love for the first time _in general_ will do that to a guy too. And yeah, it might have been a little awkward at first, a little funny when Bucky’d overestimated the amount of lube required, but, once they’d gotten the hang of loving one another so intimately, it had also been perfectly sensual and so very _them._

In the chaos of the cake, Shuri’d doubled over laughing behind a pillar, Parker'd shot spider jizz at Thor’s arm to put an end to the cake homicide, Ned had crawled under the table like a freaked out Saint Bernard in a thunderstorm, and the rest of the ‘heroes’ had wandered outside to get a head start on damage control. But not Bucky and Steve. Nope. They’d been completely oblivious to everything but one another as Bucky’d slipped a bite of chocolate cake between Steve’s beautiful lips; their bliss palpable as they’d shared a sugar coated kiss beneath the shower of sparks.  

Sweet. Sexy. Amazing. So many words could be used to describe that perfect day. But, shockingly, the next morning had gotten even better; adding sappy, swoony, and complete and utter contentment to the list. Bucky had woken up to sticky sheets, soft snores, drooling...all of Steve’s usual morning quirks, plus one: the tattoo lovingly pinched between his fingers.

Suddenly, Bucky’s stomach growled (loudly, like it meant business), so he ventured a look across the room at Stark and Co. His ‘buddies’ for the day were still bitching (loudly, like they meant business), and Bucky longed for a pair of comfy sweats instead of his tactical gear. He _also_ wished that he’d gone ahead and ordered that pizza (extra large, meat lovers), because it didn’t look they were gonna stop going at it anytime soon.

Down time was bad....or maybe it was just down time without his lake, his fire, his hut, and his goats. Ugh, it didn’t matter. Down time was down time, and sitting here doing absolutely nothing had opened the door for Steve’s _other_ new habit to crawl into his skull, making itself right at home with its spindly legs, black umbrella, and melancholy emo soundtrack. For as much as Bucky adored Habit Number One, Bucky absolutely _hated_ Habit Number Two! Despised it! Wanted to punch it in the face! Then wanted to punch it again for good measure! Because watching Steve happily toasting cinnamon raisin bagels day after day before speeding away for another half-cocked ‘mission’ was making Bucky feel something that he’d only felt a few times before when it came to Steve: suspicious.

After Shuri’d left, Steve had been overcome by the sudden, uncontrollable urge to help _everyone_ do _everything_ , while Bucky’d been _conveniently_ and _repeatedly_ summoned to the compound by Stark of all people. Iron Man and ‘Just Bucky’ had spent a few days visiting sick kids at the Brooklyn Hospital Center, Mount Sinai, and the Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital to bump up their public images (which was something that Bucky would _love_ to do with _Steve)._ They’d worked together to find flaws in the security system plans for the compound’s newest addition (three days later, they hadn’t found a single one), had gone canoeing on the lake for mandatory PTSD therapy (Bucky’d only tipped Stark on purpose once…okay, twice), and had spent an afternoon fixing a cracked steering column and replacing the steering wheel on a one-of-a-kind muscle car...yeah...okay, that one was one-hundred-percent justified... but not last Wednesday! Nope. Last Wednesday had been complete and utter bullshit!

Before he’d even finished chewing his Hump Day bagel, Bucky’d been called to the compound for an emergency, complete with rooftop helicopter pickup. It turned out that a _fucking chipmunk_ had ‘breached security’ and had ‘overrun’ the industrial sized kitchen. Stark had called in the cavalry because he ‘needed’ Bucky to catch it.

Shit you not.

But the adorable chipmunk, mildly enjoyable canoeing, and bullshit security analysis wasn’t what was getting under Bucky’s skin. If he really analyzed what was happening inside his salty brain, he kept landing on the same thing. It bothered him that Steve seemed perfectly happy popping cinnamon raisin bagels in the toaster, spreading a thick layer of cream cheese across the top, and handing it to Bucky with a kiss goodbye before speeding off to do some critical thing on the other side of the city, state, or, who knows, maybe even the fucking universe. Need someone to help fight wildfires in California? Dial up the man formerly known as Captain America and throw him a hose. Is today the day to reintroduce the native wolf population to Yellowstone? Steve always did love dogs. Adventurous raccoon stuck up in a talking tree? Who ya gonna call? Steve Rogers.

All Bucky wanted was for the two of them to be together, but, in the past few weeks, they’d been apart more and more.

This morning, FRIDAY had interrupted their wonderful spooning session to announce their separate destinations (surprise). Stark had summoned Bucky for ‘critical weapons testing’ with Parker, while Wilson and Natalia had needed Steve for another diplomatic situation in DC. Bucky, while officially on the good side of the law (sort of), wasn’t considered suitable for ‘domestic diplomatic situations’, so, instead, the helicopter had picked him up and flown him to Reformed Assassin Daycare so Stark could shoot shit at him all day.

Was Bucky being a baby? Yes. Was it shitty that he felt suspicious? Probably. But, staring across the warehouse at Stark and Parker arguing about the settings on some weird web thing, he just couldn’t shake the suspicious feeling. The whole scene felt like Steve was doing it on purpose.

His patience drained, Bucky yelled, “Just fucking shoot me with it!” as he grabbed his M249 Paratrooper SAW with the new laser scope he was supposed to be testing. With the safety on, Bucky aimed the red dot at the web thing on the table.

“It’s not ready, Mr. Bucky,” Spiderling hollered back, his voice cracking as it echoed across the three story ceiling. The guy was seventeen. Why the hell was his voice still cracking?

“It’s totally ready,” Stark scoffed, rolling his eyes at Bucky’s red dot. “And don’t think I don’t see that, Buckaroo.”

Suddenly, the asshole scooped whatever it was off the table, threw the thing on his wrist, and fired before Bucky could even think about ducking.

The web shot across the room in an instant, engulfing Bucky and his shiny new gun. Then, as if that wasn’t already bad enough, the gross jizz strings started to squeeze him (and didn’t stop squeezing him), compressing his body inwards like he’d been ambushed by a giant anaconda...if anacondas were web shaped...or had anything to do with spiders... Jesus, it fucking hurt!

“Mr. Stark! Oh my god! Why’d you…? Shit. Shit. Shit. I said it wasn’t ready!”

Parker was sprinting across the room, dodging the targets and flipping over Stark’s piles of random shit, but he wasn’t coming fast enough. Bucky had the brilliant idea to pound his metal arm on the floor to charge it up, but he couldn’t. Why? Well, kiddies, that was simple physics. The web of death was literally smashing his forearm into his stomach, destined to drive the metal right through his ribcage. This was how he was gonna go out? Getting killed by his own mother fucking arm!?

Dropping to his knees, Spider-Boy skidded to a stop next to Bucky; screaming at Stark and ripping the webbing at the same time. He was an excellent multitasker. “Why don’t you _ever_ listen to me, Mr. Stark! Just _once,_ why can’t you do what I say? Oh my god, Mr. Bucky, hang on.” Shredding the strands threatening to slice Bucky’s face like a loaf of Wonder Bread, Parker hissed, “I swear, he’s such an asshole.”

“I heard that,” Tony hollered. “Well, actually you’re too far away for me to have heard that. But FRIDAY heard it and relayed it to me, so same thing.”

It took two seconds for Parker to rip off enough constricting webbing for Bucky to get his arm free, punch the floor, and use the kinetic energy boosters to obliterate the rest. Unbelievably, once he was free, the pile of webs kept shrinking and shrinking until the whole mass of spider semen was smaller than a marble.

“Mr. Stark! I told you there was no limit on the shrinkage.” Parker was flailing around, pacing, stomping, having some kind of conniption fit. “You could’ve killed Mr. Bucky!”

What had he done to deserve this? Oh, that’s right. He’d killed thousands of people. Three cheers for karma.

“Naw, the Buckster’s a tough nut to crack. Thick skull, and, from the happy look plastered across Steve’s face lately, I’m gonna guess that he also has a thick…”

“Stark!” Bucky screamed, because really?

Dropping the web shooter, the asshole brushed his hands together and headed for the stairs with way too much pep in his step. “FRIDAY, make a note. We need to find a way to limit the shrinkage. Too much shrinkage can be _very_ embarrassing.” Stark hit the landing at the top, threw his elbows over the rail, and winked.. _.fucking winked..._ at Bucky. “Trust me on this one, I know. One Christmas, I threw an outdoor pool party in Aspen: water heated to a perfect eighty-three degrees, ice luges and vodka, steam everywhere, bikinis with fuzzy boots, lots and lots of _snow_ …” He winked again. “...if you know what I mean.”

Parker was swiveling his head back and forth between them, lost in the wonderful innocence of youth.

“Cocaine isn’t cool,” Bucky snapped, pulling his Gerber Mark II dagger out of his leg holster and flipping it across his metal fingers. He shifted his arm to black, just for shits and giggles.

“Hey, it was the nineties.” Suddenly thrusting out his entire arm out to point at Parker, Stark exclaimed, “Underoos!”

Spider-Boy literally jumped.

“This is your brain.” He kicked a decorative vase off the landing. “And this is your brain on drugs.”

Stark didn’t even pause when the ceramic shards exploded all over the concrete floor.

“Anyway, it was cold. Aspen at Christmas is beautiful, but it’s like Narnia, and whenever I got out of the pool to mingle with the _ladies,_ my speedo looked shameful. Plump berries, minimal twig.”

Poor, sweet Parker seemed shocked, repulsed by the mere idea, which was a very logical response to such a frightening image. “Mr. Stark, why were you wearing a speedo?”

“I already told you. It was the nineties.”

Now, Bucky’s knowledge of the nineties was limited, but he knew one thing for damn sure. Speedos were _not_ cool in the era of grunge.

“Plus,” Stark rambled, “unlimited web shrinkage will pulverize the target like a meat grinder, as we almost just proved, and that...well, it just wouldn’t be fair to ask our Hazmat crew to clean up that kind of mess, now would it?” Yanking open the heavy door, he did a little spin before asking, “You two test dummies ready for lunch? I’m thinking hamburgers.”

“Why am I here?” Bucky yelled. “You don’t need me to test all this shit! That’s what computer simulations and actual test dummies are for.”

“Yeah,” Stark scoffed, “but where’s the fun in that?”

Parker’d resorted to rubbing his hands over his face really fast and groaning (a lot). Whatever sneaky shit was going on around here, Bucky was one-hundred-percent positive that the kid wasn’t part of it.

Deciding to go balls out, he slammed his arm against the support beam and growled, “Where’s Steve?”

“It’s not my job to keep track of your husband. If you’re so worried, maybe you should get him a collar and a leash for his birthday? Come to think of it, Cap might even like it.” Snorting, Stark threw Parker a wink of his very own (lucky him) and leaned against the doorframe. “Hey, FRIDAY, give Chef Aaron a jingle. Extra beefy hamburgers for everyone! Tell him that’s how Buckmeister here likes his Grade A American beef. Though, come to think of it, you also liked Steve when he was a scrawny little string bean with no game. Whatever. I’m stickin’ with the beef joke. Humor trumps accuracy every time.”

The second the door slammed, Parker collapsed cross-legged on the floor next to Bucky’s useless gun. “What’s even happening right now?” he asked, his confusion buried only by his exasperation. “Seriously, it’s all passive aggressive, near-death experiences, meat jokes, and way, way, _way_ too much winking. What the heck’s going on?”

That was a very good question.

Bucky flopped down on the floor, snow angel style, and stared up at the rafters. There was a Kentucky Fried Chicken bucket wedged underneath a joint in the northeast corner, and a half empty six pack of Miller Lite hanging over another. God, Bucky could use a beer right now. Hell, he might even give Parker one! The idea of chillin’ in the rafters with a dude who liked greasy fried chicken and beer in a can made Bucky wish that he’d known Clint Barton for longer than the five seconds before Team Stark had shown up to play their deadly game of Red Rover. From the stories Steve had told him about Clint...well, to put it plainly, Bucky could use some solid advice from a guy like that right about now. Unfortunately, he was stuck with the spiderling.

“I think Steve’s sneaking around…”

“Woah, Mr. Bucky…”

“Just _Bucky.”_ He kicked Parker’s knee with his boot. “I’ve told you a million times.”

“Okay, fine, fine...it’s just hard to be that casual, with, you know…” He flopped his hands like the motion made everything clear. “... _you._ ”

“I’m just a man.”

Shoving Bucky’s boot, he laughed nervously. “Well, um, that’s not true at all... like, _at all_... but okay.”

“What if the marriage thing is too much for Steve? Maybe we should’ve just had sex and…”

“No! Nope. Holy crap. I’m gonna stop you right there, Mr...I mean, Bucky...because first off, just _no._ And, secondly, I am _not_ the person you wanna talk to about relationships. I’ve had, like, one ‘sort of’ girlfriend, and our first date ended with her dad trying to kill me, and me completely ruining her life, so, I am _not_ your go-to guy for this. You need to talk to Mr. Wilson…”

“Supposedly, he’s with Steve. Wherever that is.”

“Miss Widow...”

“Too cryptic.”

“Shuri…”

“Too far away.”

“Mr. Stark?” Peter cringed, calling himself out on his own bullshit.

“Are you fucking kidding me right now?”

“Yeah, my bad...I ran out of people. Hey…” He snapped his fingers. “Wanna talk to my Aunt May? She’s really good at advice and stuff, and she thinks it’s super cool that you guys got married. May’s very forward thinking...gay pride, loves Lady Gaga, oh...and Harry Styles. _Such_ good hair. But anyway, um, she thinks you guys are really, really hot together.”

Blinking at his new confidant, Bucky chose to kick him again for that whole paragraph. “Do I look like I know who Harry Fucking Styles is?”

Parker raised his eyebrows sky high, and Bucky knew that he was about to make a very unfortunate decision.

“Um, honestly…” He tried to hide his snickering with a fake cough. “I thought that’s what you were going for with the hair and stuff. You know, long haired Harry: tousled waves, a little greasy?”

“You know what?” Bucky snapped. “Never mind.” He bounced the back of his head on the floor a couple times, because it was true; that cute little fucker _did_ have gorgeous hair.

“She’ll make you dinner.”

“No.”

“Tonight’s meatloaf. Aunt May makes it without onions, because onions are so gross, and she adds extra breadcrumbs. _Sooo_ good. Plus, Ned’s coming over.”

“Oh,” Bucky started, dredging up all the sarcasm he could muster. “If _Ned’s_ coming over, then sign me right up.”  

Out of the blue, FRIDAY’s voice interrupted their lovely heart to heart chat. “Mr. Stark would like to inform you that Mr. Parker’s vegetarian burger and Sir Bucky’s thick, juicy, angus burger with extra, extra, extra mayo will be ready in fifteen minutes.”

Parker scrunched up his sweet, innocent face, falling right into the trap. “But I’m not a vegetarian.”

Oh, sweet baby Jesus. Bucky almost tackled the kid to cover his ears. Here it comes...

“Yes, but Mr. Stark says that you’re too young to handle real meat.”

Boom!

Sometimes the best reaction is no reaction, so Bucky didn’t move. Not an inch. Watching Parker’s face shift from confusion to complete and utter horror in the span of five unbearable seconds.

“Wow,” Parker gasped. “That was really inappropriate. Like really, really, really, _really_ inappropriate.”

“My apologies, Peter. Mr. Stark made me say it.”

And that was enough of that. For both of them.

Shoving the gun out of his way, Spider-Boy landed on his back next to Bucky, copying his snow angel style (wise choice), and didn’t say another word. It was kinda nice; the quiet comradery of being the newest Avengers (or whatever the hell they were called), getting hazed together, their weird and complex relationships with Stark, being in the dark half the time...

Here was a kid at the beginning of his life, everything in front of him, nothing holding him back except excessive levels of social awkwardness. Choices were lined up in all directions like dominos, just waiting for Parker to pick his path. Fall in love? Save the world? Go to college? He could even walk away...

God, when Bucky was seventeen, the only thing in front of him had been a life of hard labor and trying to keep Steve alive. But, all too soon, even those limited choices had been overshadowed by war. One path. No choice. And Bucky's single row of dominos had stuttered to a stop the second he’d fallen off that goddamn train. Now, all these years later, when Bucky’d miraculously been given the choice to live the dream and fall in love, it turned out that he didn’t have a clue how the whole thing actually worked. He felt like a bumbling idiot; all hormones, acne, and rejection.

“When I was your age, I was too afraid to tell Steve that I loved him.”

“Ugh,” Parker groaned. “So we’re doing this anyway?”

Ignoring him, Bucky kept right on talking. “The idiot would go off and do stupid shit all the damn time. You know the story: scrappy Steve tryin’ to save the world from assholes three times his size and gettin’ his nose broken for his trouble. It was one of the things that I loved most about him, but, at the same time, it pissed me off to no end. Scared me, you know... because I loved him.” Bucky let out a sad little chuckle. “Not that I had the balls to tell him. Anyway, whenever he got hurt, I’d give him holy hell about it, so Steve started hiding the cuts and scrapes or avoiding me for a couple days till the bruises disappeared.

“Then, Jesus, he started running off to all those recruitment offices, trying to pass himself off as healthy, ready to serve...makin' all sorts of plans without me.” Bucky paused to let that sentence sink in for a second…for him and Parker both…because, for as scrawny as Steve had been, deep down he’d always believed that Steve had been destined for greater things. Bucky was just the guy destined to get left behind. Fuck.

Even though he didn’t want to, Bucky scrubbed at his eyes and kept going. “I remember this one time, when Steve was sixteen, he told me that he was gonna go help Sister Alma reorganize the library at the church. Later that day, his ma asked me to track him down ‘cause the stove wouldn’t turn on. And guess what?”

“What?” Parker’d rolled onto his side, his head propped up like Bucky was reading him a bedtime story.

“Steve wasn’t there.” He paused, because it still hurt. “In fact, _nobody_ was. The library was locked tight.”

“Where was he?”

“I don’t know.” Bucky shrugged, the sinking feeling hitting the pit of his stomach like it was yesterday. “I told his ma that a shipment of apples had spilled outside Mr. Garelick’s corner store, and that I’d stopped to help him clean everything up. Said I got so distracted that I’d forgotten all about the stove and the church. Later that night, I sat at Sarah Rogers’ little kitchen table listening to Steve going on and on about stacking and unstacking books all day, complaining about Sister Alma’s shameful lack of organization, and whining about havin’ to turn in early ‘cause he was ‘all tuckered out’. I sat there nodding and smiling over the edge of my coffee cup as Steve looked me dead in the eye and lied right through his teeth.”

Parker whispered, “And you just let it go?” like they were suddenly in Sister Alma’s imaginary library.

“Yep.”

“Wow. That’s messed up.”

“Yep.” Bucky popped the ‘P’. It felt good on his lips.

Kicking at Bucky’s boot, he asked, “And you think Mr. Steve’s lying to you again?”

“Yep.”

The truth was, long ago on that fateful night, Steve hadn’t come home with any hidden bruises, his knuckles had been fine, and his nose had been right where it belonged. But his clothes had been wrinkled and sweaty, his hair a mess, his cheeks pink, and almost eighteen-year-old Bucky had experienced the overwhelming pangs of jealousy and suspicion for the first time.

“Dude.” Parker did a double tap this time. Ankle and toe. “Is that all you’re gonna say?”

“What else is there to say?”

The kid made a lot of noises: scoffs, sighs, frustrated groans, before finally settling on, “How about Mr. Steve is your husband now, so you need to ask him what’s going on.”

That was logical. Sounded easy in theory. Jesus, why the hell did the thought of asking Steve one simple question make Bucky feel so goddamn afraid? Onionless meatloaf was starting to sound like a really good idea.

Hopping to his feet, Parker grabbed Bucky’s metal hand and yanked him off the floor before he could protest. The kid was scary strong.

“So, Bucky...” he started.

“Yeah, Peter?”

“If I ever do manage to get a girlfriend, remind me to _never_ ask you for relationship advice.”

*****

 

  
Old movie theaters were the best. Bucky wasn’t a fan of the modern, super cinema, googaplex monstrosities. He liked the creaky flip down seats, the smaller screen with real red velvet curtains hanging down on either side, and the way the soles of his shoes stuck to the floor when he squeezed down the row to pick his unassigned seat. They smelled better too; a little musty, popcorn that smelled like real popcorn (not melted plastic), and something undefined floating through the air that felt a whole lot like 1939.

Leaning over the armrest, Bucky got extra close to Steve’s ear before whispering, “So, Tony’s back to trying to kill me.”

“Well, that didn’t take long.” Steve snickered in the flickering light of the screen, his lips wrapped around the red and white striped straw.

God, it was hard to stay mad at the guy.

After Bucky’s neverending day at Reformed Assassin Daycare, he and Steve had ventured out for Thai food and a late night showing of ‘The Shining’ at the Village East Theater on 2nd Avenue. They’d stood in the concession line on the crazy brown, cream, and raspberry striped carpet (disco fabulous) and had ordered a bucket of popcorn and an extra large icy to share (half cherry, half Coke, one straw) because Steve said it was more romantic that way.  

Peeking at Steve’s profile, Bucky had to admit that the dork had been one-hundred-percent correct in that assertion: the romance was real. Suspicious Steve’s baseball hat was flipped backwards, the tiny blond hairs peeking out the bottom and rubbing against the collar of his navy blue polo in the most tantalizing way. And then there was his mouth, wrapped around that long straw, his teeth flattening out the end as he nibbled on the plastic (extra sexy). Man, Bucky was really struggling. It would be so easy to discard everything that he’d talked about with Peter and simply enjoy the company of the beautiful man sitting next to him, hogging the icy.

“Good thing he didn’t blow your arm off again,” Steve snickered, grabbing Bucky’s metal fingers and placing them underneath the popcorn and onto the sizeable bulge in his jeans. “Because I really like the things this one can do.”

“Hey, you two wanna pipe down? Some of us are trying to watch the movie.”

The deep voice had come from Bucky’s right, a few aisles back, but neither of them bothered turning around to see who it belonged to. Maybe they were both too distracted by what was happening underneath the popcorn? Steve may have been keeping his eyes on the screen like a good boy, but he was subtly pressing his hips up into Bucky’s hand like the _best_ kind of naughty boy.

His brain was saying, ‘yes, yes, yes, yes, yes’, but, after a second, Bucky overrode himself and jerked his hand away. One, because he was trying really hard to stay pissed (despite reverting back to clamming up like an idiot), and two, because he didn’t feel like getting arrested for lewd and lascivious behavior.

“Oh, c’mon, put that back,” Steve whispered. “We can do dick in a box.”

Bucky snorted (loudly) and said, “I knew I shouldn’t have sent you that video,” at the same time deep voice guy yelled, “Come on!”

“But I liked that video.”

“Seriously, Steve, I’m gonna grab some popcorn, and your dick better not be in the bottom.”

Shoving his entire hand into the surprisingly dickless bucket, Bucky could almost feel the butter sinking into every nook and cranny on his metal hand. Steve had told him to go light on the butter, but Bucky’d drowned the thing in a virtual waterfall of saturated fat anyway. Whatever. Steve was developing a real fetish for the arm, so seeing the metal slathered in butter would probably turn him on.

“For lunch,” Bucky sorta whispered, “Stark’s chef whipped me up a half pound burger shaped like a meaty cock. Balls included.”

Now it was Steve’s turn to snort; spewing red and brown icy out his nose and almost knocking the bucket of popcorn off his _very_ uneven lap. Bucky felt oddly proud, especially when the young couple a few rows up spun around to glare at them. Obviously, they didn’t approve of Stark’s meat dick lunch special either.

Steve elbowed Bucky in the ribs as he attempted to mop up his shirt with a single ripped napkin, half laughing, half scolding, when he said, “Oh my god, shhh.”

Bucky didn’t feel like shushing.

Most days, he tried his best to be a polite, courteous, good mannered, respectful, non-murdering member of society, but today he’d regressed back to a jealous teenager who was pissed that the boy he loved was lying to him about Sister Alma! The thought was like an itch he couldn’t scratch.

After Bucky’d eaten his dickburger with a rebellious smile, Stark had felt bad (or something) and had marched him out to the balcony, handed over a prototype rocket launcher that he’d designed for Sam’s suit, pointed out a rotting oak tree at the edge of the lake, and had said, ‘Have at it!’. The fiery explosion, glorious as it had been, hadn’t even touched the memory of Steve’s wrinkled white shirt. Next, Stark had stuffed him into Steve’s new uniform, the panels all black and broody, and had told him to run a ‘flexibility test’. Meaning that Bucky’d run around the target range like a madman while Peter had tried his best to knock him over and kick his ass. It was supposed to have been fun, a little fake violence to burn of steam, but Bucky just couldn't stop thinking about where the fuck Steve had really driven off to in Natalia’s Corvette of Deception. Bucky’d been so distracted by the possibilities that Spider-Boy had landed a very unfortunate ‘ninja kick’ to the side of his head. His jaw was still swollen.

No matter what he did, Bucky’s mind kept getting stuck at that little kitchen table with a mug of lukewarm coffee and that cursedly wrinkled shirt, replaying Steve’s smile over and over as he’d lied about stacking and unstacking dusty library books.

Snatching the icy out of Steve’s hand, Bucky pressed it against his Spider-Boy battle scar and tried to let everything go. Just watch the creepy movie. Poke at the giant wet spot on Steve’s shirt. Make another dick burger joke. Take Steve up on dick in a box. Actually, _anything_ dick related would be a much better option…

But Steve wasn’t making it easy.

The chopper had dropped Bucky off from Reformed Assassin Daycare at exactly 6:54 pm. By that time, he’d been seriously exhausted by his own salt, wanting nothing more than to shove his suspicions back into the deep dark hole where they’d come from and grab a late dinner at the Thai place around the corner with his stupid husband. But, when Bucky’d charged through the door, ready to eat another cinnamon raisin bagel, Stupid Steve had been nowhere to be found!

He’d tried to convince himself that he was just tired from all the spider evasion, annoyed that his jaw hurt, wiped out from nine hours of Stark, in need of an extra long hug, something...but he’d made the mistake of staring at Steve’s wall of drawings while he’d changed into a loose pair of jeans and a soft blue t-shirt…

Steve hadn’t tacked up a single new sketch since he’d gotten back from Edinburgh.  

When the front door had swung open an hour later, Steve had waltzed in with a bouquet of calla lilies and a burning desire to give Bucky an immediate and very thourough blow job. But, no matter how gorgeous Steve had looked down on his knees, Bucky just couldn’t shake the feeling that his valiant attempts at deep throating were motivated by guilt. In the long run, Bucky’s post-orgasmic haze and growling stomach had gotten the better of him, and he’d thrown a Band-Aid over his suspicions long enough to shove down two orders of Pad Kra Pao before walking hand in hand with Steve to the movies.

But the suspicion was back again, oozing and seeping out the edges as Steve squinted his pretty blue eyes at the kid riding the tricycle thing down the long hallways of The Overlook Hotel. Bucky tried to keep himself from freaking out (about the cinnamon raisin bagels, not the movie). He was just being paranoid. He needed to remember what Shuri had taught him. Just say what you think. Stop pussy footing around and just ask him!

Danny skidded around the corner and ran smack dab into a pair of creepy twins in little blue dresses, and Steve suddenly reached all the way across Bucky’s lap to grab his buttery hand. Rubbing the last of the tattoo in a circle, he asked, “You okay, Buck?

His mind shouted ‘no!’ as the twins said, “Come play with us, Danny,” but he didn’t say it. Instead, he mumbled, “It looks like a bruise now.”

“Maybe a little, but I know what it is.”

“Yeah, a failure.”

Out of nowhere, the same voice snapped, “I’m about to get up outta this chair and complain if you two don’t shut up!”

Bucky did turn around to look this time, expecting some big bruiser from the sound of his voice, but it was a young kid; the kind who looked sixteen but was probably twenty-four. He had caramel skin, the rich brown glowing in the light, oversized black frames on his angular face, and a lightweight scarf looped over a jean jacket a few times. He was alone, and something about his pose reminded Bucky of little Steve when he used to sneak into the movies at that age. _Sneak._ Bucky hated that word.

Habit Number One went into full effect as Steve squeezed the leftover mark between his thumb and index finger, but the colorful rainbow of happiness didn’t show up in the sky.  

“Where were you today?” Bucky blurted out, keeping his eyes on the screen but not registering a single frame.

Habit Number One was instantly disengaged, the pressure released as Steve pulled back his hand and wiped the butter on his jeans. “You know where I was, Buck. I’m sorry it took a little longer than I said, but Sam got hungry on the way back.” Stealing back the icy, Steve jammed the straw into his mouth, slurping hard enough to make that annoying empty air bubbling sound.

God, he was a shit liar.

“Sister Alma stacking her books, Sam spooning mashed potatoes into his mouth... how does _anyone_ manage to do _anything_ without you, Steve?”

“Sweetheart…”

In the front row, some lady grumbled, “I would’ve thought that Captain America had better manners...”

The hairs bristled on the back of Bucky’s neck, salty wolf style, and his stomach clenched hard enough to hurt. “Well, lady, _Captain America_ isn’t here right now…”

“No, he isn’t,” Scarf Guy yelled. “Just two _assholes_ disrespecting Kubrick’s cinematic masterpiece!”

He had a point.

Smoothing down his wolfy hairs, Bucky jammed his hand in the bucket and caused a popcorn tsunami to spill all over Steve’s completely _even_ lap (salt had killed his boner like a slug). As his entire arm shifted to bright red, Bucky jerked out the biggest, most obnoxious handful that he could muster.

Side note:  After weeks of ‘deny, deny, deny’, Shuri’d finally admitted to adding a mood triggered color changing system to his arm as a practical joke (‘Like a mood ring!’ she’d said). Yeah, fucking hilarious. She’d _eventually_ told him how to turn it off, but Bucky had decided to leave it on for moments just like this. The dark red metal surrounded by the overflowing pieces of popcorn were saying everything that he couldn’t.

Steve’s eyebrows were pinched, his jaw working as he gave Bucky his disappointed stare. “What are you doing with all that?”

“Eating it,” Bucky snapped, shoving every last kernel into his mouth and throwing the Stare of Disappointment right back in Sneaky Steve’s direction. He meant to look menacing when he mumbled, “I love popcorn,” but he only managed to say “Iwufpo”, before he choked and started gagging.

Making no move to save him, Steve muttered, “Need me to do the Heimlich maneuver?”

“Please don’t...” It was Righteous Scarf Guy, throwing in his two cents as he stood up. “If he passes out, at least _one_ of you will be quiet.”

When the kid stormed up the aisle and charged out of the theater, Bucky wasn’t surprised in the slightest. They _were_ being dicks, and if skinny Steve were here, he’d sock them both in the jaw!

Bucky had two choices: choke to death or spit the half chewed mass of popcorn into his lap. The stubborn side of him was making a strong case for Death by Popcorn, but the teeny tiny rational side of his mind came from behind and eked out the win. What fell out of his mouth was fucking disgusting; nothing like the happy, nostalgic popcorn emotions that he’d experienced at the concession stand. Nope. This was all angry kernels, mushy yellow globs, and salt, salt, salt.

Grabbing the icy back out of Steve’s hand, he hissed, “No, I don’t need you to do the fucking Heimlich maneuver. I _need_ you to tell me where you were.”

Sometimes, when Steve got mad, he threw stuff. Sometimes, he punched things. Sometimes, he got all quiet and steely, his jaw snapping into a hard line as he breathed in and out of his nose like a bitchy dragon. But he wasn’t doing any of those things right now, and Bucky didn’t quite know what to do with that. After making some obnoxious slurping sounds just for show, he went with, “You’re not gonna answer me?”

Steve scrunched up his face in a way that Bucky'd never seen, swallowing hard as his eyes got all watery and his chin twitched. Setting the bucket on the floor, he flipped up the bottom of his shirt to form a little pouch and started shoving the spilled pieces inside like a popcorn kangaroo. He picked up every popcorn joey before pushing to his feet, his wide shoulders casting an enormous shadow on the screen as he turned to face Bucky. “No, I’m not going to answer you,” Steve began, sounding _nothing_ like Captain America. “Because, to tell you the truth, Bucky, I’m hurt that you think I’d be anywhere I shouldn’t be.

“And don’t think I missed that Sister Alma comment. I remember that day like it was yesterday: March 9th, 1935. I told you that I was organizing the library because I was trying to earn enough money to buy you a birthday present. I worked my ass off all day scraping layers and layers of paint off the walls in Mr. Mizrahi’s store room, then he stiffed me. Paid me a quarter of what he’d promised because he knew that I couldn’t do shit about it.”

The door to the theater suddenly burst open, the light from the lobby cutting a triangular path across the chairs to land directly on Steve’s face. He wasn’t looking at Bucky, or Righteous Scarf Guy, or even at the freaked out usher. He was looking somewhere beyond the top row of seats; like the projector window was a tunnel to his past.

But _Bucky_ was looking at the freaked out usher. The poor girl couldn’t have been more than eighteen, and, somehow, _she’d_ been handed the job of kicking out the unruly super soldier and his trusty, super assassin sidekick. She deserved a raise.

Steve wasn’t even trying to be quiet anymore. “Do you remember what I gave you that year?”

At least six people were holding up their phones to record America’s next viral video as the actual movie paused on a really awkward shot of Jack Nicholson’s nose hairs. Fantastic. And when Scarf Guy stomped to the end of their row to point his judgemental finger at them, Bucky almost snorted, because, really? Did the kid seriously think that the usher needed help identifying Captain Fucking America!?

Despite Scarf Guy’s antics, every instinct told Bucky to sink down to the sticky floor like a rogue kernel of popcorn, or a lost strand of red licorice, because Steve was staring into that light, _waiting._

It hurt Bucky’s heart to answer, “No. I don’t remember.”

“That’s because I gave my ma what little I’d earned to fix the stove, so I couldn’t afford to buy you shit!”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, Buck. _Oh._ ”

“Excuse me, Captain America, Sir.” The usher’s flashlight was shining on the spot where Steve’s star used to be, and Bucky could tell that her hand was shaking by the vibration of the beam across the folds of his shirt.

Ignoring her completely, Steve let go of his popcorn pouch and grabbed Bucky’s hand instead, pointedly rubbing his thumb across the disappearing heart as the kernels fell to the floor. “This ink might be fading, your body slowly absorbing the pigment molecule by molecule, but I’ll still remember why you put it there when there’s nothing left. Even if the ink was invisible, Bucky, I’d _never_ question how much you love me!”

“Sir...”

Steve squeezed what was left of the tattoo one last time before dropping Bucky’s hand like it burned. “Yeah, sorry, miss. I was just leaving.”

When his _husband_ shoved past his knees, turning his back and storming down the row, Bucky didn’t move. When his _husband_ paused by the last squeaky seat to say, “Sorry we ruined your movie, folks. I’ll be paying to have the cost of your tickets refunded and buying everyone a $50 gift card to make it up to you. Please stop at the ticket counter on your way out,” Bucky stayed put. And even when his _husband_ stormed out the door and Scarf Guy returned to his squeaky seat, Bucky didn’t budge.

As the projector started up again, all he could do was stare at his hand; watching the cells healing without permission...faster now that Bucky’d ripped out Steve’s heart.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! Thanks for reading and taking time to comment! It means the world to me! Find all the links for my tumblr, instagram, youtube, and inflomora-art in the Chapter 1 endnotes. 
> 
> Peace and love to everyone! #stuckyforever
> 
> Jessie :)


	4. Invisible Ink

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading my collaboration with [InflomoraArt](https://archiveofourown.org/users/deepthroatdraco/pseuds/hufflepxnk) for the 2018 Reverse Captain America Big Bang! 
> 
> Inflomora's drawing, 'Bucky Gets a Tattoo for Steve', kicks of this chapter. I know you'll love her Bucky as much as I do! 
> 
> A big thank you to the dedicated mods who run the Reverse Captain America Big Bang, and all the hugs in the world to my selfless beta [Lorien](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lorien/works) who put in hours upon hours getting this fic ready to post! 
> 
> Enjoy! :)

                                                      

 

There was a mosquito buzzing in his ear. There always was in the jungle. They never gave The Soldier a mosquito net. Why would he need one? It was his duty to sit outside on watch, unmoving, as the biting swarm crawled up his nostrils and sucked on his brain. A big one was attached to his eardrum, filling its belly with blood and memories until it was ready to pop...maybe three of them?...buzzing so loudly that he couldn’t sleep. He swatted at the biggest one...the one with the top hat and monocle…

“What? Jesus!”

Bucky shot up in bed, pain blasting through his skull, because he’d literally just slapped himself in the temple with his goddamn metal hand. Hard enough to see stars! Fuck! And the buzzing? It sounded more like a bee. Starting, stopping, starting, stopping. Rubbing at his eyes, he ignored the throbbing and tried to figure out what the hell was going on.

It didn’t take long for the first piece of the puzzle to snap into place. As soon as Bucky’s eyes landed on Steve’s side of the bed, every horrible, sickening detail came back in full, gut wrenching technicolor…

Steve’s half of the bed was still made.

“FRIDAY, what’s that sound?”

“I’m not at liberty to say, Bucky.”

“Where’s S…” Drifting off, he didn’t let the rest of…(censorship beep)...name slip off his tongue. Nope, he wasn’t even gonna think about (beep). Changing tactics, he asked, “Am I in imminent danger? Is that buzzing coming from a deranged psychopath with a dental drill?”

“Might I suggest going to look for yourself?”

The buzzing bee stopped, and Bucky was left alone with only the never-ending soundtrack of impatient New Yorkers honking their horns, the upstairs neighbors’ annoyingly yippy Poopadoodle (or whatever the fuck it was called) ‘barking’ non-stop, and the whirring sound of the fan in the corner to keep him company. No good. Too quiet. Batting at his stupid morning wood, he gave his chest hair a good scratch and took a good long look at his tattoo. Overnight, the last of the color had disappeared completely...which wasn’t fucking ironic in the slightest.  

Last night at the theater, Bucky’s ass had stayed parked in his creaky seat of nostalgia for at least half an hour after the credits had rolled. One, because Kubrick’s shot of Jack Nicholson frozen in the snow maze had hit a little too close to home, and, two, because Steve’s words had hit a mother fucking home run. He’d taken his sweet time coming to terms with a few things while an _entire gang_ of petrified ushers had swept the mushy popcorn disaster out from under his feet...

One: Steve might be a sneaky bastard, and he was most certainly the world’s worst actor, but he wasn’t deceitful (if that made sense). That Sister Alma story?  _Obviously_ true and so damn _Steve._

Two: No matter how hard Bucky squished up his face to try to make his brain click, he just couldn’t remember if his mother had baked him a birthday cake in 1935. A Chocolate Depression Cake made with vinegar and vegetable oil instead of eggs and milk? An applesauce cake still warm from the oven? Crumbling cornbread dipped in the last of their honey? No clue. Had Becca stuck in eighteen candles for him to blow out? And, if she had, what had he wished for? But there was nothing; just a hole in time, filled with memories of lukewarm coffee, the suspicious blush on Steve’s cheeks, and that goddamn wrinkled shirt!! He certainly didn’t remember that Steve hadn’t given him a present! Family was what mattered to Bucky. _Steve_ was what mattered to Bucky. Why the heck would he have cared about Steve being too broke to buy him a gift?

Suddenly, something clattered in the kitchen (maybe the dentist had dropped his drill?) which was followed up by scurrying, rustling, and some low-key growling. Obviously, the mosquitoes and bees had moved on to greener pastures, clearing the way for a gang of hungry raccoons to infiltrate the kitchen cupboards with their disconcertingly human-like hands. Bucky groaned, torn between confronting his angry raccoon husband and getting into another fight with his angry morning wood. Presented with two unappealing choices, Bucky chose door number three: more introspective thinking!

Once the ushers had successfully removed the popcorn, empty icy cup, and crumpled napkin from Bucky’s immediate vicinity without prompting a Winter Soldier attack, they’d grown less skittish. The one who’d kicked (beep) out of the theater had even brought Bucky a box of Milk Duds as a peace offering. Her name was Trixie. They were friends now. But Trixie wasn’t the point of this introspective moment. The _point_ was: after he’d devoured half the box and had completely encased his teeth in caramel, a crystal clear memory from the day he’d ‘turned into a man’ had shown up...for better or for worse…

After listening to Steve’s lies and choking down his shit coffee, Bucky’d pulled out the fifth of whiskey he’d stashed in the back of Steve’s closet for just such an occasion. In hindsight, Steve probably thought that they’d been trading shots to celebrate his best buddy’s birthday, but Bucky’s objective had been to drown the green eyed jealousy monster and _his_ ‘best buddy’, Suspicion, in the bottom of that bottle. To say that they’d gotten flat out drunk was a serious understatement. Steve had passed out with his scrawny legs hangin’ off the bed, and Bucky had collapsed on the lopsided wood floor with that fucking wrinkled shirt as his pillow.

But that wasn’t the good part...

The next morning, they’d been in a world of hurt; hungover, stiff, and...did he mention hungover? Anyway, a wildly amused and completely unsympathetic Sarah Rogers had kicked their asses out the door at ten to buy the parts they’d needed to fix the stove.

That wasn’t the good part either...

The Good Part:  The sun had been bright that day, piercing the narrow spaces between the buildings and letting everyone know that spring had sprung. Sunshine plus a hangover? Bucky chuckled and ran his hand across the soft spot just beneath his belly button, because this new memory included a snippet of Steve hunched over like an anemic vampire, hugging the perimeter of the buildings, and slinking his way from shadow to shadow to avoid the light. Even though he’d been pissed, Bucky’d wanted to kiss Steve that day...well, he always wanted to kiss him...but that day he’d fantasized about offering up his neck for Dracula Steve so he could suck Bucky dry. Dramatic? Yep. But the memory didn’t lie: Steve acting like a crabby little shit had doubled the craving’s usual intensity.

The Bad Part: Despite their splitting headaches (and Bucky’s distracting blood sucking desires), it had only taken fifteen minutes and a little elbow grease to get the stove working. Bucky’d been sitting on the floor, his hands covered in dirt and soot, when Steve had knelt down in front of him with his floppy hair and a sad little smile. Striking the wooden match to relight the burners, the sweetest vampire in Brooklyn had whispered, ‘Happy birthday, Buck.’

The meaning of the memory had hit Bucky like a low blow in the theater, and it was doing its best to knock the wind out of him again.

Dammit! Kicking his feet like a three-year-old throwing a nuclear tantrum, Bucky shoved the mess of sheets and blankets off the end of the bed. Why was he such an idiot? A stupid, dense, thick headed, dumbass...which, honestly, played right into his third movie theater realization...

Trixie’d just slid into the seat next to him, throwing her Converse up on the seat in front of her and handing over a package of Sour Patch Kids, when it had finally dawned on him: Steve was Bucky’s first serious romantic relationship. And loving Steve...and being loved _in return._..was messing with Bucky’s mind in ways that Hydra never had. After years and years of pining, Bucky was stellar at _unrequited_ love, but getting what he’d always wanted was making him act like a dorky, insecure, sixteen-year-old whose gorgeous date was getting _way_ too much attention from the captain of the football team at the homecoming dance. Or, if you like your analogies a little more personal, just like Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes had acted when gorgeous Peggy Carter’d waltzed into a London bar wearing the world’s most mouth-watering red dress.

It didn’t matter that Bucky was roughly one-hundred-something years old. His life, in many ways, had been stunted the afternoon his draft papers had shown up in the mail. Envelope in hand, he'd snuck down to the basement and had let himself have a good cry under the stairs, because Bucky’d known... The second that he ripped open that envelope, his days of worrying about steppin’ on girls’ toes, pining after a spitfire of a boy who didn’t know the meaning of the word ‘no’, and figurin’ out how to be a man in his own good time were over. The innocence of youth thrown aside in favor of dirt, pain, suffering, and the tunnel vision of staring down the scope of a sniper rifle.

He and Trixie had finished off the Sour Patch Kids, passing the bag back and forth until there was nothing left but a coating of sugar stuck to his fingers. Sucking off every last bit of sweetness, he’d let himself grieve for twenty-five-year-old Bucky Barnes: a simple guy from Brooklyn who’d never gotten the chance to do things in the right order.

Okay, that was _more_ than enough introspective thoughts for one morning. Rolling across the cold side of the bed, Bucky sighed when his feet hit the carpet. He needed a minute before confronting the buzzing raccoon dentist, so he plodded over to stare at the heart drawing in the corner...just like he had every day since he’d first discovered it...but the tiny piece of paper was gone, the silver tack carefully replaced in its hole. It was there last night. He knew that for a fact, because he’d stood there contemplating the permanence of raspberry jam while breaking pieces off the fern and crying like a baby at two o’clock in the goddamn morning because (beep) still hadn’t come home! Wiggling his toes in the decimated fern leaves, Bucky wondered if everyone went through this kind of shit the first time that they let themselves love someone completely?

The smell of coffee drifted into the room, and fear, anxiety, nerves, and caffeine excitement all crashed into Bucky’s ribcage at exactly the same time. Deranged dentists didn’t typically brew hazelnut coffee, and hungry raccoons didn’t typically steal sentimental drawings. So, was it make-up coffee? Had the buzzing come from a sex toy of forgiveness? Or, worst case scenario, had the Psycho Dental Assassin decided that a little pick-me-up was in order before attacking Bucky’s molars with his drill?

Without thinking, Bucky snatched the silver thumbtack out of the wall and tiptoed as much as the creaky floorboards would allow to peek into the living room. There were no psycho dentists in sight (thank god), and no animals or insects of any kind, just (beep)...

Scoffing at himself, he let that one go. Mental censoring took way too much effort.

It was just _Steve,_ sitting with his back to Bucky in one of their kitchen chairs at their kitchen table (neither of which were in the kitchen). He was wearing a tight white tank top (sexy), he had his Dodgers hat on backwards (sexy), and one sinful inch of his red boxer briefs were peeking out over the top of his jeans (overwhelmingly sexy). God _damn,_ Bucky loved it when his underwear did that! He wanted to run over there and touch that tight cotton waistband, snap it, tug on it, slide his hands underneath for the perfect butt grab before sneaking a kiss onto Steve’s beardy cheek, but he couldn’t…because suspicious assholes like Bucky didn’t deserve unlimited VIP underwear access.

Scrubbing his hand over his beard, Bucky stood in the doorframe, trying to make heads or tails of the discombobulated living room. The furniture was everywhere. Like IKEA after an earthquake. The couch had been shoved into the middle at an awkward diagonal, their super comfy, posh, brown leather ‘reading chair’ was facing the window on Steve’s left, and the coffee table was tilted at an angle not conducive to drinking coffee on top of the bunched up rug. Their stainless steel garbage can was in the mix, the end tables weren’t at the end of anything, and an orange extension cord was snaking its way through the maze, looping and curling it’s way towards Steve’s bare feet. Steve himself was hunched over the table doing...something.

It was weird, random, and confusing. Bucky had questions… _so many questions_...but, first and foremost: How the fuck had he slept through Steve’s cataclysmic morning redecorating?

Steve _knew_ that Bucky was standing there like an idiot. _Of course_ he knew. The guy could hear a tree fall in an empty forest over two miles away (meaning that, yes, the tree _had_ made a sound), but Steve could be a salty mother fucker too. Little and salty, big and salty, it didn’t matter; Steve was a shaker full of sodium and adorableness in _all_ sizes. So it came as no surprise when he didn’t stop whatever mysterious thing he was doing, or bother turning around to acknowledge Bucky’s presence in the earthquake zone. And, since Bucky’s inner insecure, teenage wallflower was rearing his ugly head, he kept standing there in the darkest corner of the dance, drinking punch in an ill-fitting suit, and rolling the silver tack around the center of his metal palm.

Out of nowhere, Steve said, “Coffee’s ready. Why don’t you grab yourself a cup?”

That sentence was…unexpected.

The Vice President of Salt _still_ didn’t look his way, bending over and pretending to fiddle with something on the floor instead. Why? Because Steve was a _saucy_ mother fucker too. Obviously, the sole purpose of this maneuver was to give Bucky an unobstructed view of the Battle for Dominance between his jeans and his underwear. When the underwear claimed victory by hanging out a good six inches, it begged the question: Why wear jeans in the first place? Anyway, without seeing his face, Bucky couldn’t properly assess if Steve was still pissed. The delicious curve of his ass provided no clues in that department.

Come to think of it, _Bucky_ didn’t know if _he_ was still pissed at Steve. Natalia’s bitchin’ Camero, with its trunk stuffed full of cinnamon raisin bagels, was still heavy on his mind, but they had to start somewhere. A simple apology seemed like the way to go...

“Steve, I’m sorry...”

“Coffee first,” he interrupted, sitting up and peeking over his shoulder for the first time. “Then c’mere. I have something for you.”

That sounded a little like a direct order (bossy bossy bossy), but when Steve swiveled around to face him, Bucky’s eyes got stuck on his toes...forgetting...wait, what?...toes...sexy...steel grey toenails...

A few nights back, Steve had given him the _best_ foot rub (surpassing Tien’s mystical skills) before he’d pulled out a _very special_ bag from the drugstore; the one that had made them giggle like naughty school boys getting their first look at real porn. After taking the bottle of grey nail polish out of their taboo plastic bag, Steve had taken his time kissing and sucking on each and every one of Bucky’s toes before painting them like he was working on the goddamn Sistine Chapel. Bucky’d tried to return the favor (keyword: tried), excelling at the foot rub, but failing miserably at the painting part. They were a disaster, but, Steve being Steve, he hadn’t done a damn thing to fix them.

The sight of Steve’s globby grey toenails peeking out from the bottom of his overly long jeans inspired a thought that said it all: Steve was the artist in the family.

_Family..._

Spinning back towards the table, Steve adjusted his hat and added to his order. “Get me a cup too,” he said definitively.

Bucky’s _family_ was super bossy.

After a pause, Steve added, “Please,” which sounded pretty polite for a bossy, pissed off person (plus, fighting really sucked), so Bucky sidestepped into their little kitchen and quickly filled up two mugs, the aroma of hazelnuts making him feel better already. He filled the order (black for Steve, one cream for Bucky) and got lost in the differing shades of brown; the ritual of morning coffee for a married couple...something that normal people did every day all around the world...

Bucky didn’t stir in the cream, letting it fold into the darkness like a peanut butter swirl as he walked towards Steve with the mugs in one hand and the tack in the other. First, he noticed how the sunlight pouring through the windows was lighting up Steve’s profile, revealing the honey undertones of his beard and accentuating the straight line of his nose in the warm light. That, contrasted with the adorable way his hair was curling up around the edges of the hat, made him look younger and older at the same time. Steve was doing T’Challa’s trademarked ‘middle-distance stare’, his gaze aimed in the general direction of the peeling, green brick building across the street. Or, perhaps he was staring into the past again, wondering where _his_ twenty-four-year-old self had gone?

Inching closer, Bucky spotted the drawing of the tiny heart on the seat of the leather chair, and he squeezed the tack in his palm; the mere sight of it making his brain stem tingle. Somehow, the smear of raspberry jam seemed brighter in the sunshine, even though the passing of time had turned it pinkish brown. When Bucky glanced down at the blank space on his hand, he had a horrible thought: Would Steve’s raspberry heart fade away to nothing too?

Steve cleared his throat, but there were too many confusing and unexpected things sitting on the table for Bucky to pay him any mind: a black box of mysterious origin, Vaseline (old school lube?), plastic bottles with purple rubber gloves snapped over the tops, a roll of paper towel, a neat little row of teeny tiny paper cups filled with red, pink, and black ink…

Holy shit.

When Steve slowly spun around to reveal a tattoo gun in his gloved hand, Bucky almost dropped the coffee.

“Steve...”

No response. He simply set the machine down next to the colorful row of bottles and grabbed the mugs with his purple hands, taking a sip out of the one that wasn’t muddy before throwing a little smile over the rim. The softness of it made Bucky dizzy, and, without thinking, he opened his palm to let the tack roll to the center like a weird little offering.

“I thought you snuck in and took the heart because you felt like I didn’t deserve it,” Bucky mumbled, the truth of those words taking him by surprise. Until the syllables had spilled out of his mouth, Bucky hadn’t even realized what the empty spot on the wall had made him feel.

The mugs were placed on the crooked coffee table, then, when they started to slide, were placed on the floor. Plucking the tack out of Bucky’s palm and the paper from the chair, Steve softly said, “Have a seat. I wanna tell you a story.”

“Is it a story about getting roped into marrying an idiot?”

“Yes.”

Bucky snorted, because what else was he supposed to do? Choke to death on more popcorn? Eat Milk Duds and Sour Patch Kids until his teeth fell out? When he moved to sit in the chair, he wondered if his feet were gonna dangle like a child’s?

“But, in your defense,” Steve began, tacking the drawing to the side of the chair at eye level and totally fucking up the leather, “it takes one to know one.”

Before Bucky could even register what was happening, Steve had grabbed his right hand, squeezed the skin where there was nothing left to squeeze, and had placed it on the armrest. “Now, be a good idiot and don’t move.”

Maybe it was because Bucky’d only taken one sip of coffee, or because he’d gotten four hours sleep (tops), but the very real fact that their kitchen table was full of tattoo equipment didn’t fully register until Steve switched out one pair of latex gloves for another and started wiping his hand with something cold.

Reality. Panic. Confusion. Adrenaline. All of it hit at the exact same time.

“Steve! I know I was a total dick last night, but you don’t have a clue how to use that thing!”

“I don’t?”

Bucky’s blood pressure skyrocketed as his stomach dropped to the basement, his body clearly unable to make up its mind. “Is that a trick question?”   

“Not really.” Raising his eyebrows, Steve held up a tongue depressor with a glob of Vaseline on the end. “But the real question, sweetheart, the one that matters at the end of the day, is do you trust me?”

Wow. ‘Do you trust me?' Those four words were about _so_ much more than Steve wielding a tattoo gun, and, suddenly, Bucky was back in Wakanda...

 

“I know that Shuri got the trigger words out of my head...we’ve tested it a thousand different ways to be sure...but it still scares the shit out of me, Steve.”

He still couldn’t believe that Steve was here _...really here..._ sitting two feet away from him in the tall grass with the frighteningly large African bugs. Steve, who Bucky’d loved forever. Steve, who’d just said ‘yes’. Steve, whose hand Bucky was _definitely_ squeezing too hard between his new fingers.

Adjusting the dark sunglasses on his nose and sniffing, Steve stared out at the lake. The water was still, the surface reflecting the deceptively peaceful sky, and Bucky couldn’t remember a time when the landscape had been so quiet; the children, animals, and even the afternoon breeze hiding from what was coming…

God, he was sick of fighting.

“It’s funny,” Bucky continued, flexing his shoulder muscles and watching the plates and panels in his arm shift like water. “I’m stronger than I’ve ever been. Physically, this new arm...I dunno, Steve, the things it can do are unbelievable. Mentally, my mind is finally my own, but…”

When the words stopped, he got pissed. Disappointed in himself, because Shuri’d taught Bucky _so much_ about words: they were more powerful than his fist, fearing them made him weak, and, most importantly, that one man speaking his truth could change the world.

Steve gently wiped a bead of sweat off Bucky’s upper lip before prompting, “But what, Buck?”

Just say it. Speak. Open your mouth. Tell him the truth.

“I can’t shake the fear that The Soldier’s still in here,” Bucky blurted out, pressing the hand he’d been born with against his temple, “waiting for the perfect opportunity to hurt you again.”

“You’re not gonna hurt me.”

Steve’s voice was solid, absolute, a definitive line in the sand that felt so familiar, and Bucky slid around in the grass to face him head on.

This beautiful man, wearing nothing but boxers and classic eighties Raybans, was putting all of his faith in _Bucky?_ God, Steve was such an idiot! Reaching over to push the sunglasses on top of the dipshit's head, Bucky realized that The Soldier wasn’t what he was afraid of…

“I think,” he started, letting the endorphins rage...shit...he needed to take another breath...the kind of deep, cleansing yoga breath that filled his belly from the bottom up. Touching Steve’s knee to ground him, he imagined the air devouring the fear as he tried again. “I think that getting what I’ve always wanted is making me feel weaker than I ever have.”

Tipping his head into Bucky’s touch, Steve whispered, “Like you have something to lose?”

Warm skin against his palm...the way that Steve had absently drawn spirals in the dirt with his artistic fingers...the completeness that Bucky’d felt when he’d slowly kissed Steve’s lips…

Bucky had _everything_ to lose.

He sighed, because it was getting harder and harder to ignore the pattern of Wakandan jets gathering on the horizon. Zeroing in on Steve’s blue eyes to help himself focus, Bucky found the power to admit, “I’m afraid you’ll eventually realize that you were wrong to trust me with this…” He tapped Steve’s sternum. “...wrong to trust me with your heart.”

A familiar routine came into play: raised eyebrows, pursed lips, stiffly set jaw, squared shoulders...the whole deal. It didn’t matter if Steve Rogers was a skinny little fucker ripping into a guy for being a dick in a movie theater, a big fucker dressed in a dirty American flag costume ripping into the United States government, or a half-naked fucker, casually sitting next to a lake before the end of the world, gearing up to rip into his brand new fiancé. You see, big speeches were Steve’s thing. Always had been, and, apparently, always would be. Bucky could tell that this one was gonna be a doozy the second Steve poked his sternum right back.

“Now you listen here, Bucky Barnes. I’ve never been wrong to put my trust in you. Not when we were kids, not during the war, not when The Soldier was trying to kill me on that fucking helicarrier, and not when the whole world was calling you a terrorist.” Steve poked him again, then two more times for good measure, before continuing his speech. “And you’ve _never_ let me down. Not once. So don’t you dare question me trusting you with my heart. I know _exactly_ what I’m doing.”

 

  
  
“Bucky, you’ve been staring at this Vaseline a little too long.” Waving the stick around in an apparent attempt to lure his brain back from Wakanda, Steve said, “I’m starting to get worried here.”

“I’m thinking.”

Steve scrunched his eyebrows together even further, forming a fuzzy caterpillar above his nose. “About trusting me?”

“No...about why I thought I couldn’t.”

Something really deep and psychological was happening, but Bucky didn’t need to figure out that Freudian shit right now. Bottom line, looking at Steve, all worried and holding up his little stick, Bucky knew that he trusted him...even if he was planning on tattooing ‘total fucking idiot’ from Bucky's shoulder to his wrist. Jesus. What the hell was wrong with him? _O_ _f_ _course,_ he trusted Steve.

The popsicle stick and its little glob of Vaseline dropped towards the table as Steve’s shoulders fell, which wasn’t what Bucky wanted to happen at all. Quickly catching Steve’s wrist, he yelled, “I trust you!” _way_ too loudly.

There was a pause, all big and dramatic, before Steve pointely asked, “You sure about that?”

“I mean, analyzing the situation: you’ve got a stick, lube, a machine that’s gonna jam needles into my skin at a billion miles per hour, and me sitting half naked in a leather chair, so…”

His cheeks did the wonderful pink thing that Bucky loved so much. “Oh my god,” Steve gasped. “I didn’t even think about that! Shit, I’m so sorry…”

“Steve,” Bucky snickered. “I’m kidding. I’m sure you have a very good reason for pawning me off to Stark’s Unlicensed Daycare for Recovering Assassins.”

Oops. Guess there was still some salt left in Bucky’s shaker too. Was it possible to trust someone _and_ be lightly salted with the essence of vinegar at the same time?

Pulling in a _really_ long breath between his teeth, Steve went ahead and smeared a thin layer of Vaseline over the missing tattoo. “So, I still suck at hiding things, huh?”

“Yeah, you’re the worst.”

He hummed as he tossed the stick in the trash, then grabbed something off his table of dangerous toys. An oddly confident Steve was doing the exact same steps as the guy who’d inked Bucky the first time (sans piercings and the catchy name of ‘Bang Bang’), and, when he placed a new stencil of the little heart on his hand, Bucky’s _real_ heart started melting.

When ‘Steve Steve’ started talking...no, wait...that didn’t have the same ring as ‘Bang Bang’. When _Steve_ started talking, Bucky knew enough to shut up and listen.

“I’ve never lied to you, Buck. Not about anything that wasn’t _for_ you...a gift, a surprise…”

Peeling back the paper, the blue lines were perfect; the little ‘S’ even better in Steve’s own handwriting.

“But I’m still sorry. This... _us_...is all new, even though it's not, and I need to pay more attention to what’s happening in front of me instead of getting lost in big ideas and grand gestures.”

Bucky’d been staring at the heart, marvelling at the tiny ‘S’ and the warmth of Steve’s voice, so when the buzzing kick-started, he totally freaked out. “Woah! That thing isn’t like a pencil, Steve. There’s no eraser.”

“Well,” he drawled, “that’s not _entirely_ true. The serum did a pretty good job of erasing the first one. But I’m not gonna mess up. I promise.” Smiling, Steve dipped the machine in the little cup of black and used his left hand to stretch the skin. “Now, don’t move. It’s story time.”

Shockingly, the motion of his first line was smooth and confident. Bucky wasn’t really prepared for that...

“That first day in Wakanda,” Steve started, his voice equally smooth and confident, “when I ducked into your little house and saw you sleeping so peacefully...not frozen in a goddamn tube or knocked out cold with your arm in a vice...I dunno, Buck. It was the happiest moment since…” He drifted off, wiping away the extra ink with a paper towel to reveal a perfectly tattooed half of the heart. “Honestly, it was the happiest I’d felt _...ever._ I stood there for a while before I woke you up; studying the way the lines of your hair curled down your back and flopped in your face. And I totally analyzed your beard, noticing that your hairs were shorter and rougher than mine. I probably shouldn’t admit that I stared at your feet peeking out from the bottom of your blanket for at least five minutes.”

Giving Bucky a shy smile, Steve kept right on going with his sappy, sappy sweetness. “Right then and there, I decided that I wanted to be with you the _right way._ I was sick of waiting! Especially since we never should have waited in the first place! So, I was standing there, quietly lurking and thinking about how stupid I’d been when you opened your beautiful eyes, attacked my boots, and asked me to marry you.” Chuckling, he dipped the machine in the ink and quipped, “Not what I was expecting, by the way, but god, hearing those words come out of your mouth? It was the best moment of my entire life.”

The buzzing was oddly soothing as he pulled the line for the second half, and Bucky’s anxiety started melting into something gooey and warm, like fresh raspberry jam.

“Since that day,” Steve continued, “there’ve been too many best moments to count. Like the second day back at the compound, when you disabled the cameras and alarms to sneak me out of the infirmary, broke into Tony’s apartment, and put me in an overly bubbly bubble bath…”

“You were very dirty,” Bucky whispered, knowing damn well that the reason that he’d lovingly washed Steve’s hair had _absolutely_ _nothing_ to do with cleanliness.

“Yeah, well, you certainly fixed that. I mean, after you’d gently rubbed the washcloth across my bruised chest for fifteen minutes, I’m positive that my nipples had reached a whole new level of cleanliness.”

Steve laughed, happy and light, before drawing the ‘S’ in one quick line; way too skillfully to have never touched a tattoo gun before. And the fact that Bucky was legitimately a complete and total idiot really started sinking in.

“Oh my god, Steve. You’ve been learning...”

“Nope,” he interrupted with his biggest smile yet. “This is my story, and I’m not done telling it.”

Setting down the machine, Steve stretched his shoulders before picking up a second one, pushing the foot pedal to test it. The buzz was lower, stronger than the first...more like a big, fat bumble bee hovering above a tulip than a blood sucking jungle mosquito. When Steve dipped the tattoo gun in the red ink, the word ‘idiot’ ran through Bucky’s head, over and over at high speed, even as a warm smile crept onto his face.

Touching the tip to Bucky’s hand, Steve didn’t speak until the buzzing kicked in. “We have more ‘best moments’ to talk about first. For example, that day we picked out our mattress. It was such a simple thing, Buck, but knowing that it was gonna be _our_ bed.. _.together._..well, that was nothing short of magical. And rubbing your feet, kissing those pretty toes before painting them?” Steve laughed, glancing down at Bucky’s perfect grey toes before poking them with his sloppy disasters. “Yeah, I liked doing that.”

Bucky liked him doing that too.

“Best moments like walking down the courthouse steps, knowing that even though it was just a piece of paper, we’d done it. We’d beaten back the bullshit long enough to stare into one another’s eyes and honestly say, ‘Yeah, you’re the one for me. You’re where I want to start and end my days. You’re mine and I’m yours’.”

As Steve rocked the machine in little circles, Bucky could feel the color becoming part of him...not through the pain of the needles...but with the meaning of the motion.

“When I saw your tattoo, I loved everything about it. And even though we were about to get arrested, I was touched that you’d chosen something so simple to represent us.”

The whole time that Steve was adding more red, wiping, adding, wiping, he kept telling his wonderful story. “You know, I doodled that heart on the plane ride to Wakanda. Wanda had brought stuff to make sandwiches. That girl, I swear, we’re off to try and save the world and she finds time to pack fresh bread, almond butter, and raspberry jam.” Shaking his head a little, Steve wiped at the red as Bucky’s stomach growled. “Anyway, I was doodling in my notebook, distracted, and, when a big glob of jam dropped in the middle of the heart, I figured that we were meant to be.”

“Destiny determined by jam?”

“Exactly.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.” Bucky laughed as Steve dipped the machine in the pink. Bang Bang hadn’t used pink.

Steve’s voice was suddenly low and serious. “It does to me. And seeing the heart on your hand? Knowing that you’d chosen it without hearing the story first...I mean, c’mon, Buck, you’ve gotta admit, that’s cosmic.”

The gooeyness in Bucky’s heart had gotten too gooey to form words, so a nod was gonna have to do.

“When the cops had you bent over the hood of the car, I had this idea…”

Bucky snorted.

“Shush.” Sappy Steve smiled so big that his eyes got all watery. “This is the romantic part!”

Handcuffs and romance, two things that went together like peanut butter and chocolate.

Bucky must have given Steve a look that conveyed his Reese’s Peanut Butter cup analogy perfectly, because they both cracked up at the same time. Laughter filled the room, bouncing off _their_ bulletproof windows, _their_ halfway assembled bookcase, _their_ comfy couch, and _their_ mugs of freezing cold hazelnut coffee. And it felt so goddamn cathartic! Bucky could laugh like this for days, for years, for decades! God, he prayed it was decades…

Quickly setting everything down, Steve wiped his eyes with his forearm as Bucky inhaled too much air and snorted not once, not twice, but three times. And a kind of peace settled in his chest as Steve pulled himself together enough to finish his ridiculous story...

 _"Anyway,_ I used my Captain America charm to talk this amazing artist in Williamsburg into teaching me how to tattoo, because I wanted to be able to redo this little heart every time it faded. His name’s Rukus.”

“You charmed a guy named ‘Rukus’?”

Five grey toes wiggled on the top of Bucky’s foot as Steve tipped his head, curious puppy style. “That’s what you got out of that sentence?”

“That’s the only thing I got out of your whole spiel.”

Now, Bucky was an idiot (certified by the American Idiot Association), but it was okay, because Steve was an idiot too. There were no wolves in need of a reintroduction to Yellowstone, no dragons attacking the Great Wall of China with Matt Damon, and nobody else putting the wrinkles in Steve’s shirts...he'd just been working on the sweetest, kindest surprise with some dude named ‘Rukus’ in Hipsterville.

Even though he already knew the answer, Bucky asked anyway. “So, that’s where you’ve been?”

“Yeah, genius. That’s where I’ve been.”

“I’m really sorry…”

“Nope,” Steve cut him off. _“I’m_ the one who’s sorry. I need to get better at surprises.”

“You _suck_ at surprises,” Bucky groaned. But the groany feeling was short-lived. A mixture of relief and rainbow happiness took over as Steve wiped the remaining ink off his hand with a satisfied grin.

The little heart was bright and bold, the pink in the center making it pop, and all Bucky could do was shake his hair over his face as he attempted get his whirlwind of emotions under control. Bubbling. Zinging. Shock. Guilt. Happiness. Overwhelming rainbows. Seriously, after everything that Bucky’d done, how the hell had he gotten lucky enough to land on his feet in a place where he was gettin’ all weepy over an elementary school heart?

Sliding his foot up Bucky’s ankle, Steve’s voice was like melted caramel as he murmured, “We’ve been through so much and apart for so long, I think it’s fair to assume that it’s gonna take some time to establish trust...especially since you just found out that I lied about your birthday present eighty-three years ago.”

The tiny smile that he loved so much appeared on Steve’s beardy cheeks, and Bucky's arm turned gold.  

“God, you’re such a smartass,” Bucky muttered, going for ‘annoyed’.

“Don’t even try it, jerk. I can tell that you’re all lovey dovey inside. You _literally_ look like an Oscar.”

Mental note: Switch off Mood Triggered Color Shifting System before pretending to be annoyed at unfairly adorable husband.

Steve held up both hands and made a big show of pulling his purple gloves off inside out. It was a very confusing mini-strip tease until he flipped the glove off his left hand to reveal his very own tiny red heart....which, holy shit!

“I did this right before you woke up, but you have to finish it.”

“What?”

Standing up, Steve used his big, strong, bulging, masculine muscles (sorry, Steve’s arms made Bucky vomit adjectives) to pick up the chair (Bucky included) and turn the whole thing one-hundred-and-eighty degrees. With his new vantage point, Bucky found himself totally and completely speechless.

“C’mon, switch places, Buck. I want you to tattoo the ‘B’.”

Somehow, he managed to squeak, “Are you kidding? No. I’ll mess it up…”

Crazy Steve kissed Bucky’s forehead, then his cheeks, then his lips, before throwing out his best line yet. “That’s impossible, sweetheart. I just want you to put your mark on me...it doesn’t matter what it looks like...I just want everyone to know that I’m yours.”

The rainbow was here to stay! Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, and, hell...why not throw in fuchsia, chartreuse, periwinkle, and a few more happy colors that Bucky had no idea how to spell.

“Plus, my plan is to redo these every few weeks, so...” Steve laughed as he tugged Bucky out of the chair by his super gold arm. “...even if it’s a total disaster, you’ll get another chance, and another, and another...”

Bucky couldn’t help himself. Grabbing Steve, he wrapped him up in the biggest, tightest bear hug and lifted him off the ground. “How am I this lucky?” He gave Steve a few good shakes, before adding, “You put up with all my shit…”

“Well, to be fair,” Steve interrupted, “you put up with all _my_ shit too.”

Nature Fact: Bears like nuzzling into their mate’s furry chest hair when they squeeze them! Shake, nuzzle, squeeze, repeat. You can Google it.

Actually, don’t Google it. Bucky’d totally made that shit up.

“I can’t believe that you learned how to do this for me, Steve,” Bucky exclaimed between a round of shake, nuzzle, squeeze. “And so fast.”

“Yeah, it was hard,” Steve mumbled breathlessly (maybe Bucky Bear was squeezing him a wee bit too hard?). “But knowing...I’d get...a hug like this was...Jesus, Buck...really motivating.”

This _was_ an amazing hug! Shoving his nose into its rightful place in the center of Steve’s chest, Bucky took a good whiff. Was it weird how much he loved smelling his _husband?_ Yes? Whatever, he didn’t give a shit. Steve was minty, fabric softener-y, and perhaps a little...

“Buck,” Steve gasped. “I...can’t...breathe.”

Okay. Affirmative on the overly-zealous hug. Bucky Bear reluctantly released his grip, but not before sneaking in one last enormous whiff to figure out that last scent…ahh, it was Natalia’s vanilla bourbon candle.

After the color had returned to Steve's cheeks, he stuck his hand in Bucky’s face and flapped it around. “C’mon, you’re leavin’ me hanging with this empty heart. If you’re not careful, I’ll sneak off and get Sam’s initial in there instead. You know, we _have_ been spending a lot of time together at the tattoo shop.” Bopping Bucky in the nose with the heart, he flippantly said, “Or I could get Sister Alma’s...”

“Very funny.”

“Or Sharon Carter’s…”

They stared at each other for a beat, daring one another to be the first to laugh at that moment of temporary insanity.

Steve lost.

“Point made, Casanova.” Bucky bopped Steve’s nose right back before crowding into his space. “If you’re crazy enough to set me lose with a tattoo gun, then who am I to deny you?” Throwing a wink his way, Bucky pulled another new thing that the internet had taught them out of his naughty pocket. “Now, sit in the chair, _Mr. Barnes.”_

Man, did Steve turn a gorgeous shade of pink before he responded, “Whatever you say, _Mr. Rogers.”_

The ‘B’ that Bucky drew wasn’t half bad...a little crooked, a few hesitation marks...but the look on Steve’s face when he wiped off the last of the ink said that it couldn’t have been more perfect.

*****

 

“Stand up, let me get a proper look,” Shuri scolded with a big grin. “I can’t believe you...trying to hide Steve’s artistry underneath that scrubby t-shirt? Shame on you.”

Snickering, Bucky took another obnoxious swig from the gallon of orange juice, because this was _their_ new tradition. Every time they video conferenced, Shuri always insisted on a slow-motion, three-hundred-sixty degree spin to check out Steve’s latest masterpiece. Why should today be any different?

Their kitchen table was back in its normal spot, and Bucky was chillin’ with his feet propped up, eating Oreo cookies straight out of the bag and washing them down with OJ. Steve was taking one of his super long showers, gettin’ all sparkly fresh for their lunch date with Barton. The guy was back in New York for the first time in _years,_ and Bucky was feeling oddly excited, kinda anxious, and really struggling to talk himself out of showing up with a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken tucked under his arm.

To pass the time, he’d given Shuri a ring to catch up and, as an added bonus, to keep his mind off original recipe chicken legs. It had been over four months since her visit, and Bucky missed the heck out of her.

“I just got dressed,” he whined. “If I take my shirt off, it’ll mess up my hair.”

“I take you to get one mani/pedi... _one_...and ‘poof’, you act like more of a princess than I do! Don’t think I don’t see those perfectly painted black nails.” Her smile lit up the computer screen as she adjusted the intricate braids wrapped around the crown of her head. Swear to god, Bucky’d never seen her with the same hairstyle twice! Today, there were tiny white flowers tucked in between the braids. “Plus,” she continued, “it’s impossible to mess up a hairstyle whose sole purpose is to look _messy!”_

“Hey now…” Dropping his feet off the table, Bucky fluffed out his waves. “I just got it cut!”

“Yes, I can see that.” Miming scissors, she made some _very_ sarcastic snips in the air. You went from _long_ and messy, to _chin length_ and messy.”

That was totally true, but his hair made him oddly defensive. Shuri knew Bucky's Herculean weakness and used it to her full advantage.

“It’s brushed back,” Bucky scoffed. “I’m using a rubber band and everything. And, in case you didn’t notice, I shaved off my beard this morning.”

 _“Of course_ I noticed that you shaved off your Chewbacca beard. You and your husband were starting to look like you were competing to co-pilot the Millenium Falcon. But, I’m very sorry to tell you, Bucky, revealing that you have _actual_ skin covering your sculpted jawline doesn’t magically make your hair neater.”

She laughed as she ran her hands over her own perfect braids, carefully avoiding the blooms. “But I like it messy. From what I saw in New York, it’s very ‘on trend’. Go out and buy yourself a pair of boxy black glasses and you can walk the high end runways during Fashion Week.” Spreading her arms wide, she read her own headline. “I can see it now: The White Wolf takes the fashion world by storm!”

“Are you done?” Bucky shoved another Oreo into his mouth, generously leaving the last one for Steve.

“Not until you show me your new ink! I’m dying to know what Steve drew after the water designs faded.”

“You’re relentless. Do you give T’Challa this much crap?”

“Of course, I do.”

Chugging down way too much orange juice, Bucky pushed back his chair because he knew that Shuri wouldn’t stop. She’d bug him and bug him until he finally gave in with a good natured sigh. He always pretended that her pestering bothered him, throwing in every ounce of big brother annoyance that he could muster, but, the truth was, he loved every second. It took him back to a place where five-year-old Becca had pulled on Bucky’s trousers until he’d ‘begrudgingly’ snapped his Hershey Bar in half…

“2018’s hottest fall trend is one-armed jackets.” Oh, Shuri was bringing the drama, drama, drama. “Prada leads the rebellious charge with versions in silk and cashmere...”

“Oh my god, fine,” Bucky grumbled, his heart warm and full with a mixture of Shuri and Becca’s laughter.

He jammed the last Oreo in his mouth (sorry, Steve) and paused. After his shower this morning, he’d thrown on a simple black t-shirt with his beat-up brown jeans. They had a rip in the thigh that Steve liked sticking his finger in, which made them part of Bucky's regular wardrobe rotation. His hair was pulled back in a half-up/half-down man bun thing, and he was clean shaven for the first time in years. When he’d checked himself out in the mirror, he’d felt good...sexy even...but that was _with_ the shirt to hide his scars.

It was dumb and irrational. He knew that. But he still had to psych himself up and push past it every damn time. Logically, Bucky understood that Shuri’d led the team during the extensive surgery to remove the remnants of his old arm so they could build the new socket. She’d literally had her hands _inside_ his body, screwing nuts and bolts to his bones, and yet, here Bucky was, worrying about the thick scar tissue running across his torso from where she’d stitched him back together. Ridiculous.

“I can see you thinking, Bucky,” she said sweetly before sitting down in front of her monitor. “Remember what we talked about the last time?”

“I am beautiful, no matter what they say,” Bucky muttered in the most monotone voice he could muster; sad robot style.

Leaning even closer to the camera, Shuri nudged him in the right direction. “Are you singing the song in your head? I told you, Christina Aguilera is the key to embracing your scars.”

That was silly to the highest degree, but Shuri’s offbeat affirmation had worked like charm ever since she’d shown up at his hut with a set of portable speakers and an aux cord for her phone. Closing his eyes, Bucky let Christina’s perfect pop voice float across his insecurities, the lyrics of 'Beautiful' working their magic.

Suddenly, she clapped her hands together and interrupted his song. “C’mon, let’s sing it together.”

“Out loud?”

“Did I stutter? _Yes,_ out loud! And we’re going to sing it over and over until you finally believe it.”

The shower shut off, which annihilated any and all hope that Steve was gonna miss out on this exercise in power ballads and positivity.

Shuri sang the first line, and, with no possibility of getting out of this, Bucky rolled with it and joined in. “Everyday is so wonderful, then suddenly, it's hard to breathe. Now and then I get insecure, from all the pain, I'm so ashamed…”

“Perfect!” she cheered. “Now sing your solo.”

Yes, Bucky had a designated solo, and (if he said so himself) he sounded damn good singing it.

Christina was smearing her confidence all over his scars like globs of buttercream frosting, every word giving him more power as he sang, “I am beautiful, no matter what they say. Words can't bring me down. I am beautiful, in every single way…”

Covering her mouth, Shuri tried (and failed) to hide her smile. “Do you feel better?”

“I feel better.”

“It’s because you listened to me.” Patting herself on the back, she blew him a big kiss before resuming her previously scheduled programming. “Now, show me your new tattoos.”

The anxiety was gone; not a lick of shame or a crumb of embarrassment surviving Power Ballad Therapy. Christina Aguilera worked every damn time.

Grabbing the hem of his shirt, Bucky pulled it off, revealing the intricate designs Steve had tattooed over the ones that had faded since the last time he'd talked to Shuri. Angling his arm towards the camera by the door, he started with the two red roses surrounded by a sprinkling of emerald green leaves on his forearm.

“He tattooed these a few days ago because Natalia sent us a late housewarming gift basket full of smelly stuff. I decided to try out this bottle of rosy body wash, and when Steve was figuring out what to draw over the koi fish remains, he leaned in for a kiss and got a big ol’ whiff of roses.” Rotating his arm so Shuri could see the blooms, he snickered. “So...these are symbolic representations of fancy body wash.”

Her laugh was long and loud. “Well, that’s even better than Steve trying his hand at Japanese koi fish because it was the first thing that popped up when you dorks Googled ‘tattoos’.”

“Yeah, well, don’t give us too much credit,” Bucky said, turning his upper arm to show her the dagger going in and out of his skin. “He tattooed this knife because I lost a bet. He said I wasn’t flexible enough to...”

Bucky stopped short. Shuri could never, _ever_ hear the details of that particularly ill advised bet. It was rated NC-17. Maybe XXX. Their friend, the internet, had shown them that it was possible to suck your own dick. They’d watched _many_ videos to confirm. Always up for a challenge, Bucky’d been extremely confident in both his flexibility _and_ his dick size, but Steve had been a firm non-believer (pun intended).

 

The Bet:   The winner got to tattoo whatever stupid thing they wanted on the loser.

The Side Bet:   If Bucky could make himself come, he got to tattoo ‘Property of Bucky Rogers’ across Steve’s ass.

The End Result:   Bucky’d pulled a muscle in his back and had ended up with a nine inch ‘sword’ (yes, Steve had measured) tattooed on his arm to remind him of his epic failure.

 

Cocking her head to the side, Shuri’s wheels were obviously turning. “Flexible enough to do what?”

“Never mind,” Bucky mumbled. “I’ll tell you when you’re older. And by ‘older’, I mean _never._ ”

Swinging around in his chair, Bucky pointed out the envelope and the little hourglass on his upper arm. “But these have real meaning. The hourglass...well, it’s to remind Steve and I of the time we lost, so we won’t forget how precious our time together is now. And, since you can flip an hourglass over and over to add sand to the clock, it’s kinda like us.”

He really liked moving the tattoo back and forth, imagining that their sand was eternal. It was beyond sappy and Bucky adored it.

“Oh, and Steve also thought the hourglass was funny because the serum eats the ink so fast. So it’s like the tattoo’s keeping time on itself.”

With a little nod and seriously pursed lips, Shuri quipped, “That’s so meta.”

Bucky had no idea what ‘meta’ meant, but she didn’t give him a chance to ponder teenage vocabulary, asking, “And the envelope?”

That was his favorite part. Smiling, he traced a path around the edges with his suddenly gold index finger. “Whenever I miss Steve, I’m supposed to imagine that he slipped a hot, sexy love note inside for me to read while he’s gone…”

“Bucky!” Steve yelled, popping his wet head through the door. “You’d better not be telling that to Shuri.”

“Hi, Steve.” Shuri waved, nonplussed.

“Oh, shit!”

Bucky wanted to point out the swearing (mistake number one), but the poor thing looked freaked out enough already.

Stepping into the room with an exasperated look on his adorable face (mistake number two), he said, “Uh, hi, Shuri,” before hissing, “Bucky, why are you half naked? It looks like you’re on one of those…” Covering his mouth, he stage whispered, “...webcam sites.” (mistake number three)

“Steve, Steve, Steve,” Shuri tsked, leaning in and shooting Bucky her ‘oh, it’s on!’ wink. “I _really_ want to ask what type of ‘webcam’ sites you are referring to, but the more pressing question is: Why are _you_ half naked?”

The shock and horror that overtook Steve’s features made it immensely clear that he’d forgotten several key things: Shuri had a perfect view of their living room from _several_ angles, she could hear _everything_ they said with perfect clarity, and Steve had waltzed into the fishbowl wearing nothing but a sinfully low-slung towel and a freshly washed beard.

“Shit.” Steve stumbled backwards and slammed the bedroom door. The wood did nothing to mute the string of profanities pouring out of his mouth, and Shuri and Bucky both heard him yell, “Mother fucking mother fucker shit!” which didn’t even make sense.

Not missing a beat, Shuri deadpanned, “You need to start a swear jar. It will make me rich.”

Bucky snorted just as, “I’m such a stupid asshole,” floated through the door. Classic.

“Man, I love me some good blackmail material.” Shuri snickered. “Now, c’mon, c’mon. The suspense is killing me. Show me your back.”

Steve had created a permanent home for the tattoo equipment by the windows (complete with a comfy chair and a massage table), and Bucky headed towards the light to angle his back towards the corner camera.

After the heart tattoos, their brand new tradition had started by accident. They’d been relaxing in bed later that week, doing normal married couple stuff: Steve shading a weird pigeon featuring Tony Stark glasses, an overly groomed goatee, and Iron Man legs; Bucky flipping his knife to see how many times he could rotate the blade without hitting the ceiling or accidentally stabbing himself (seven). When Steve had held the arrogant pigeon up for his approval, Bucky’d simultaneously caught the knife with his metal hand and had read the title: ‘Even Iron Pigeon has a dumb goatee’.

Boom! Involuntary idea!

Without thinking, Bucky had blurted out, ‘You should tattoo that on my lower back! Stark would _lose his shit_ if I pretended that I had an itch or something, lifted up my shirt, and casually flashed an Iron Pigeon tramp stamp out of nowhere on a mission.’

And so it began.

Steve had tattooed the pigeon (or at he'd least tried to). Every line had ended up looking like an EKG readout due to the influx of uncontrolled giggling hindering the very serious tattooing process. But, despite the shaky start, their plan had come together perfectly. In yet _another_ stupid meeting with holographic Ross and his band of merry dickwads, Steve had ‘dropped’ his phone (step one), and Bucky’d thoughtfully gotten up to retrieve it (step two). He hadn’t even bothered with the ‘fake itch’ part of the plan (skip step three), going balls out and taking his sweet ass time bending over in front of Stark, yanking up his shirt, and revealing distorted Iron Pigeon in all his glory (the sensational step four).

Needless to say, Grandma Stark hadn’t dropped by with any baskets of homemade oatmeal raisin cookies lately.

But they hadn’t stopped there.

A week later, the pigeon had looked more like a dirty cloud, and Bucky’d recruited Wilson and his dark red Ford F-150 for a top secret mission of his very own. He’d charged into the apartment a few hours later with a massage table, dramatically kicking the couch out of the way to make room and stripping down to his boxer briefs with maximum excitement. In fact, he’d been too excited to notice that Steve had been standing in the middle of the kitchen with a microwave burrito halfway up to his mouth. It had been perfect timing. When Bucky’d climbed onto the table, wiggled his hips, and had said, ‘Get rid of that burrito and tattoo my back,’ he could honestly say that a perfectly good bean burrito had never met a garbage can so fast.

The fading pigeon had been transformed into the roots of a giant oak tree, Steve curving the outline of the trunk up Bucky’s spine and allowing the branches to flow across his shoulders and seamlessly blend with his scars; not hiding them, but accentuating the unique beauty of the raised skin. When Steve had finished, they’d looked in the mirror together, and yes, Christina Aguilera had serenaded them at full volume.

It had become something sensual, the pain of the needles relaxing both muscles and mind, because Bucky could _feel_ Steve...the strength of his presence and the movement of his hands as he coaxed lines, shadows, and colors into existence. The tree had come to life over five wonderful nights; Steve shading the trunk and branches in black and grey, taking his time when he added the rough texture of the aged bark, and curling and looping the lines to make the leaves grow. After each session, the open skin would heal so quickly that it only took an hour of cuddling, and several delicious late night snacks, before Bucky was ready to make Steve feel _his_ presence with every thrust of his hips.

The tree had faded over the course of two weeks, but Steve had spent hours patiently layering koi fish and swirling patterns of blue and turquoise water over the disappearing branches. And, when every inch of skin on his back had been covered, Bucky’d begged Steve to expand his colors down his arms, because every line gave the two of them the chance to learn more about who they’d become in the years they’d been apart...

 

_When Steve had visited Clint’s farm and had met his wife and kids, he’d found himself longing for a home of his own, littered with foot killing Legos…_

_Sometimes, late at night, Bucky looked through his journals from Budapest to remind himself of how lucky he was to remember…_

_Steve had barely survived waking up in a new century alone..._

_Bucky really missed his goats…_ (Just kidding. Well, he did miss his goats, but _everyone_ knew that. So, no secret there.)

_One of Bucky’s favorite things about life in Wakanda had been the kids: their giggles, their simple joy..._

 

“Did you forget I’m here?”

“What?”

Shuri’s voice was patient. _Always_ so patient. But, yes. He’d totally forgotten.

“Your back is to the window,” she said. “I can’t see anything.”

“I was thinking about Legos.”

“You’ve been hanging out with Peter and Ned too much.”

“Probably.” He chuckled, because they’d totally put together the Avengers Tower Lego set last Tuesday. “Hang on for one more minute, Shuri. I have to finish my deep thoughts.”

Taking a really deep breath, Bucky peeked at his hand. They’d redone their hearts, their _rings,_ once a week, making sure to keep the colors vivid and bright. And Bucky was getting better at tattooing the ‘B’ every single time (not great, but _better_ _)._ But the point of all these deep, mushy thoughts was the happiness they’d discovered as pigeons had morphed into trees, then fish and waves, red rose petals, naughty envelopes, symbolic dick knives, and a never-ending hourglass whose grains of sand defied time itself.

A sense of calm hit Bucky like he’d just finished an hour of yoga in Bryant Park. Plus, the sunshine warming his back felt wonderful. Shaking out his shoulders, he smiled up at the camera. “Okay, I’m done.”

“Are you sure? Because I’ve never seen Legos inspire that kind of smile.”

Shuri never missed a thing.

Aiming his back towards the camera, Bucky said, “FRIDAY, please put Shuri on the big screen,” because he wanted to watch her face when she saw Steve’s latest work. He felt a kind of pride when he whispered, “Can you tell what they are?”

Seven nights of wonderful buzzing, intimate kisses, leftover lasagna, and ruminations about tiny toes...

Putting Shuri on the TV screen had been the best idea, because she paused, scrunched up her cheeks, and then, ‘Pow!’, her face exploded into the best kind of shock. She literally gasped, “Oh, Bucky, they’re wings.”

Smiling, he lifted both arms (mechanical and rose covered) to expand the skin, giving Shuri the full picture. They weren’t the wings of an angel with a heavenly glow, or the sturdy feathers of a golden eagle floating across the air currents...no, Steve had created these wings especially for Bucky as a modern gift, just like the magic of Shuri’s color changing arm.

Blowing off Stark, Banner, and even Wilson, Steve had spent hours upon hours bent over his new drawing table, creating the design. Bucky’d delivered chocolate raspberry coffee (thank you Wanda), provided unlimited shoulder rubs, and had smothered Steve with so many kisses of encouragement that a ‘four kisses of encouragement per hour’ limit had been imposed ( _three_ if Bucky got carried away with his tongue).

The intricate set of mechanical wings perfectly matched the design aesthetic of his new arm: gold inlay snaking and curving between each metal feather, with carefully drawn nuts and bolts connecting them to a realistically rendered spine. When Steve had transferred the wings onto to Bucky’s skin, he’d made sure that the feathers followed the natural curves of his anatomy as they faded from gold, to silver, to ‘Road House Blue’. Pure bliss was the only way to describe the feeling of Steve’s machine curving the tips of the wings inward just above Bucky’s hip bones. He’d made the ends pointed and sharp; deadly potential rendered as a thing of beauty...

Steve had turned Bucky into a work of art.

Looking over his shoulder at the camera, Bucky knew he was blushing when he said, “Steve gave them to me so I’ll always be able to fly, even when he’s not by my side.”

“That’s true,” Steve interjected, waltzing through the bedroom door in a much more appropriate pair of jeans (that were riding _inappropriately_ low on his hips). “But I’m doing my best to make sure that doesn’t happen much anymore. This jerk’s really growin’ on me.”

When Steve planted a sloppy kiss on Bucky’s cheek, all he could smell was roses.

His blue henley was showing off a sliver of skin just above his belt, his hair was neatly slicked back behind his ears, and his own little red heart stood out against his pale skin. The mere sight of him took Bucky’s breath away...every damn time.

Smiling up at Shuri’s face on the flat screen, Steve bumped Bucky in the shoulder. “I’m even dragging his grumpy ass...shit...sorry, bad habit. I’m dragging his grumpy _butt_ to a charity auction tonight, despite his many protests.”

“I love charity,” Bucky half snapped/half whined. “I just don’t wanna wear a tux.”

“Life’s dress code can’t always be ripped jeans and kevlar, sweetheart.”

Shuri snickered and gave them a double thumbs up. “First of all, you two are the cutest. Secondly, I want pictures of you dressed in your tuxes. This is mandatory.”

Going for the last of the orange juice, Steve returned the thumbs up.

“And, Steve, I’m old enough to hear you say ‘ass’.”

“No, you’re not.”

Yeah, Steve would definitely nix Shuri’s cut-up tank tops. The thought made Bucky smile like crazy.

Chuckling, Shuri mouthed the word ‘ass’ as she waved. “I’ve got to run. It’s almost five o’clock, and I’m supposed to meet with T’Challa about enhancing the forcefield. By the way, Steve, the wings couldn’t be more stunning. Perhaps we can work together to bring them to life someday?” Banging her hands on her desk, Shuri popped out of her chair, making her head go out of frame. “Love you guys.”

“Wait, wait, wait!” Bucky exclaimed, snatching the OJ and manhandling Steve’s body into the light. “You’ve gotta see _my_ handiwork before you go.”

Steve happily let himself get pushed around (another new thing from their sexy internet toolbox), and Bucky quickly shoved his shirt up past his shoulders to reveal…

“Oh no, you didn’t!” Shuri practically screamed.

“Oh yes, I did. My beautiful husband let me draw whatever I wanted, and this, my friend, is what a _real_ masterpiece looks like.”

Bucky’d ‘tattooed’ a giant, god-awful, crooked heart across Steve’s _entire_ back. It stretched from shoulder to shoulder, the point lining up with the top of his ass crack, and the center featuring a completely lopsided ‘S + B’.

Cackling, Shuri’s face came back into view. “That looks horrible.”

Steve’s face got all gooey and wonderful as he reached over his shoulder to touch the top of the heart. “I know, but I love it.”

“And it’ll fade...” Bucky snickered, tracing a gold fingertip around the shaky outline. “Eventually.”

*

 

  
Once Shuri’d disconnected, it took Bucky all of two seconds to spin Steve around and push his shirt the rest of the way over his head. This course of action was _absolutely_ gonna make them late for chicken and beer, but he needed to feel Steve’s skin. Now.

Bucky didn’t hesitate before he mushed their bare chests together, and there was no dramatic, overly thought out pause before he slid the tip of his tongue between Steve’s lips. It was the opposite of slow when Bucky ditched his jeans, yanked off Steve’s, and wildly flung them in opposite directions (taking out a lamp and a bowl of green grapes in the process). But Bucky didn’t care about lamps, or grapes, or cinnamon raisin bagels, and wrinkled shirts were just wrinkled shirts. Sister Alma could go fuck herself...wait, that was too much...Sister Alma (God, rest her soul) could politely go ‘beep’ herself, because the mistakes Bucky’d made in the past had _absolutely_ _nothing_ to do with the family he was building now...

A family that someday might leave a pattern of tiny footprints in the carpet...

Moving as fast as he possibly could, Bucky got rid of everything that was keeping their skin apart, leaving only the invisible ink that held them together. When he looped his arms around Steve’s waist and tucked his nose tightly into the crook of his neck, Bucky knew in his heart that _their_ ink would never fade.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It was a wonderful whirlwind creating this story, and I was blessed to have such a gorgeous work of Art from Inflomora-Art to inspire me. A big thank you to the dedicated mods who run the Reverse Captain America Big Bang, and all the hugs in the world to my selfless beta [Lorien](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lorien/works) who put in hours upon hours getting this fic ready to post! Please give her Stucky art some love!  
> [drjezdzany](http://drjezdzany.tumblr.com)
> 
> I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts and comments. Chatting about these boys gives me life! :)
> 
>  
> 
> [Quackit homepage](/)
> 
> Find Jessie Lucid's Stucky Art here:
> 
> [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/jessielucidart/)  
> [Tumblr](https://lucidnancyboy.tumblr.com)
> 
> Find Inflomora's Art here:  
> [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/inflomora.art)  
> [Tumblr](https://inflomora-art.tumblr.com)  
> [Ao3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/deepthroatdraco/pseuds/hufflepxnk)

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for joining us on our Stucky adventure! We can’t wait to hear what you think. Please send comments our way so we can chit chat about sassy Bucky and sweet Steve for days and days on end. :) 
> 
> Find Inflomora-art here:  
> [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/inflomora.art)  
> [Tumblr](https://inflomora-art.tumblr.com)  
> [Ao3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/deepthroatdraco/pseuds/hufflepxnk)
> 
> Find lucidnancyboy/Jessie Lucid Art here:  
> [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/jessielucidart/)  
> [Tumblr](https://lucidnancyboy.tumblr.com)
> 
> Invisible Ink Mood Playlist:
> 
> 1\. Mazzy Star- fade into me  
> 2\. MAX (feat. gnash)- Lights Down Low  
> 3\. The Rolling Stones- You Can’t Always Get What You Want  
> 4\. MISSIO- Bottom of the Deep Blue Sea  
> 5\. Nirvana- Shiver (Unplugged in New York)  
> 6\. Inara George- Fools in Love  
> 7\. Nirvana- Oh, me (Unplugged in New York)  
> 8\. Temple of the Dog- Four Walled World  
> 9\. The Verve- Slide Away  
> 10\. The Used- Yesterday’s Feelings  
> 11\. Shawn Mendes- In My Blood  
> 12\. Camila Cabello- Never Be the Same  
> 13\. Two Feet- Love Is a Bitch  
> 14\. Peter Gabriel- In Your Eyes  
> 15\. Tom Walker- Play Dead  
> 16\. Two Feet- Had Some Drinks  
> 17\. Christina Aguilera- Beautiful  
> 18\. Tom Walker- Just You and I


End file.
